The smartphone/tablet hybrid - usually described as a ‘phablet’ - isn’t as much of a niche product as previously thought. That’s the conclusion of a new report from Juniper Research.

It expects global phablet shipments to exceed 120 million units in 2018, up from an estimated 20 million last year.

Private communications specialist Silent Circle and open source handset producer Geeksphone have announced a joint venture to produce a security-focussed smartphone.

The new device is called Blackphone and runs a custom version of Android.

HP has announced its first smartphone devices since discontinuing the Palm webOS range in 2011.

One has a 6-inch screen - the HP Slate6 VoiceTab - and there’s also a HP Slate7 VoiceTab with a 7-inch screen. Both run Android 4.2 on a quad-core processor, are equipped with stereo loudspeakers and have a 5 megapixel camera on the back.

Last month a report from Ben-Gurion University in Israel identified what it described as “a critical vulnerability” in Samsung devices that used the Samsung Knox security system.

The issue, which the university said “could be used to bypass all Knox security measures”, was raised by a PhD student.

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge return with their first mobile industry podcast of 2014.

This week they're looking at new Samsung, Sony and ZTE products from CES, they're talking about Android embedded in cars, they're catching up with the latest news from BlackBerry, they're discussing cheque payments by smartphone, they're revealing complaint data from Ofcom and they're investigating quite a few other stories as well.