Mark Bridge writes:

We’re moving into that time of year where product announcements are replaced by promotional campaigns and sales figures. Apple revealed it had sold three million assorted iPad tablets in just three days, while Samsung said its Galaxy SIII smartphone had sold more than 30 million units since its launch in May.

Microsoft is replacing its instant messaging platform with Skype, the online telecom platform it took over in 2011.

Windows Live Messenger - originally known as MSN Messenger - is expected to be ‘retired’ in early 2013.

A preliminary estimate from the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service suggests that Microsoft is making more money per unit with its new Surface RT tablet than Apple makes from a basic iPad.

After conducting a ‘teardown’ of the Surface RT model with 32GB of memory and an optional black ‘touch cover’, IHS iSuppli calculated that its components were worth $271 and the manufacturing cost was $13, resulting in a total cost of $284.

We're talking about Apple's iPad mini, the new Google Nexus devices and Microsoft's two updated operating systems in our podcast this week.

There's also the launch of 4G from EE, an assortment of quarterly results and some analysis of smartphone sales.

Microsoft has officially revealed Windows Phone 8, its mobile operating system that’ll be available on previously-announced smartphones from Nokia, Samsung and HTC from next month.

The company says Windows Phone 8 is built to work seamlessly with Windows 8 computers, Microsoft Surface tablet devices, the Xbox 360 game console and the SkyDrive cloud storage service.