John Barratt, product lead for 2ergo, predicts what lies ahead within the mobile marketing arena for retailers in 2012:

1. Mobile search marketing spend to increase significantly in 2012.

Mark Bridge writes:

The really big news last week wasn’t good: 17,000 jobs worldwide are being lost at Nokia Siemens Networks (which, incidentally, is a separate company from both Nokia and Siemens). That’s not far short of a quarter of the total workforce. The company is going to focus on mobile network infrastructure and services, with a particular emphasis on mobile broadband, and is likely to sell off other parts of the business.

Mark Bridge writes:

Today’s mobile phone customers want more and more mobile data, which is stretching network capacity. In addition, many of those consumers would rather not be committed to a limit; they’d rather have a mobile internet tariff that is (or appears to be) unlimited. This puts even more pressure on mobile networks.

Ofcom has told Internet Service Providers how it expects them to make sure customers understand how internet traffic is being managed.

The regulator believes existing consumer information about traffic management isn’t clear enough and warns that it may need to legislate if improvements aren’t made.

In this week’s edition of The Fonecast we start with an ombudsman’s plea to sort out ‘unlimited’ data tariffs in the UK. We then move on to mobile music before covering mobile wallets, mobile gaming and the mobile patent wars. There’s even time for a little digital art.

As always, you can listen to the programme on our website audio player, via iTunes, by subscribing to our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.