Apple is planning to take over mobile and network security company AuthenTec in a deal that’s said to be worth around $356 million.

AuthenTec provides a variety of security solutions, from encryption technology to fingerprint sensors, for mobile phones and computers.

Mark Bridge writes:

By now, everyone who's anyone has offered an online 'unboxing' of their Asus Google Nexus 7. And if they haven't, there's probably a review on the way.

I'm very happy with mine. But there was one particular usage scenario I was curious about. How would it function as an audio recorder?

The worldwide mobile phone market grew by just 1% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2012, according to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. However, the volume of smartphone sales grew by 42.1%.

IDC has calculated that 406 million mobile phones were shipped in Q2 2012, of which almost 154 million were smartphones.

Customers on the Three UK network have more than doubled their monthly mobile data usage within the past year. Last summer, average use by ‘pay monthly’ contract customers was 450 megabytes per month - but the figure is now up to 1.1 gigabytes.

Three offers ‘all you can eat’ data options on all of its tariffs, pointing out that most other UK smartphone users are on a tariff with an allowance of no more than 1GB.

Everything Everywhere has published interim results for the first six months this year.

Service revenue for the six-month period until the end of June 2012 was £2,989 million. That’s a 1.8% drop year-on-year, although removing the effect of Ofcom’s mobile termination rate cuts would show a 3.1% increase.