A new Ofcom report says smartphone ownership nearly doubled in the UK between February 2010 and August 2011 - increasing from 24% to 46% penetration - with take-up higher in the UK than in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

In addition, the number of people using their mobiles to go online was higher in the UK than in any other country surveyed.

The latest research from Strategy Analytics predicts that sales of mobile phones able to handle HTML5 - the latest version of the language used to construct web sites - will grow by 365% between 2011 and 2016.

In fact, worldwide HTML5 phone sales are expected to increase from 336 million units this year to 1 billion units in 2013.

Mobile developers now have two new device detection databases to help them design and build mobile web sites.

The services are being offered by 51Degrees.mobi, a Reading-based business that specialises in device detection, web optimisation and mobile analytics solutions.

Mark Bridge writes:

Season of goodwill?  Not in the mobile phone industry.

Orange UK is putting its prices up next month. It says the 4.34% rise is less than inflation, so you might think customers would be pleased. You’d be wrong. Also unhappy are many people who’ve discovered Carrier IQ software embedded on their phones. Fortunately for the UK mobile industry, most of those people seem to be in the United States. And there was unhappiness in Egypt as Twitter’s acquisition of privacy and security company Whisper Systems saw Whisper’s mobile encryption applications taken (temporarily) offline.

The European Commission has worked with mobile handset manufacturers, operating system providers, internet service providers, broadcasters, social networks and mobile operators to form a new coalition that aims to make the internet better and safer for children.

There are 28 founding members of the ‘Coalition to make the Internet a better place for kids’.