Microsoft has revealed details of its forthcoming Windows Phone 8.1 mobile operating system, which will be installed on new phones from this month and will also be available as an update to current Windows Phone 8 users in the near future.

This new version of the Windows Phone OS will offer a virtual assistant called Cortana, named after a character in the Halo video game series.

Acquisition announcements from Facebook and Intel are the first stories in this week's look at the latest UK mobile industry headlines.

They're followed by news about mobile payments, mobile banking, a phone with an invisible solar panel, customer complaints, low-cost 4G smartphones, productivity apps and an intriguing case of WhatsApp-itis.

Mark Bridge writes:

“Hey, everybody, we’re releasing a new flagship smartphone that carries all the hopes of the company with it. If this sells well, we could be saved. If not, it could be disaster.”

“Great. What shall we call our new phone?”

“Oh, we’ll give it the same name as the previous model. That’ll be fine.”

The final quarter of BlackBerry’s financial year, which ended on 1st March 2014, saw the company selling around 3.4 million smartphones to end users.

However, it says over two-thirds of these ran on the older BlackBerry 7 platform, which means just 1.1 million were newer BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

Microsoft has announced a handful of new and updated mobile applications, including the long-awaited launch of ‘Microsoft Office for iPad’.

This comprises three separate iOS apps - Word, Excel and PowerPoint for iPad - now available in the Apple App Store, along with an update to the OneNote app. The basic apps are free for viewing and presenting files.