Vodafone Group has announced an agreement with the Kuwait-based Zain Group that will expand Vodafone’s presence in the Middle East and will also provide Zain customers with greater global support.

Customers of both networks will benefit from enhanced coverage.

Ted Landphair of voanews.com writes:

A lot of people gave up carrying much cash a long time ago, since they knew ‘plastic’ - a credit or debit card, or a store or public transit ‘smart card’ - would be accepted just about everywhere.

But to hear tech companies tell it, plastic cards will be museum pieces as well before long.

Figures from ABI Research reveal that 11 million eBook readers are expected to be shipped worldwide this year, down from last year’s total of 15 million devices.

And despite the average tablet device selling for much more than an eReader, media tablets are expected to outsell eReaders 9 to 1 in 2012.

South Korean telecom company KT has unveiled a mobile phone attachment called the Spider Laptop. Although it looks like a conventional laptop with an 11-inch screen and QWERTY keyboard, the accessory has no central processing unit or stand-alone operating system because it’s designed to extend the features of a smartphone.

The first version of the Spider Laptop was developed in partnership with Samsung and can connect to a Samsung Galaxy SIII with a single cable.

Juniper Research has forecast that over 2.5 billion mobile augmented reality (AR) applications will be downloaded to smartphones and tablets every year by 2017.

The research company points out this is 3½ times the number of downloads of the Angry Birds game last year.