Qualcomm has created a new wholly-owned subsidiary called Qualcomm Life that’ll run the business unit formerly known as Qualcomm Wireless Health.

In addition, Qualcomm has set up a $100 million ‘Qualcomm Life Fund’ for the Qualcomm Ventures group to invest in wireless health projects.

Mobile Virtual Network Aggregator Cognatel, which works with Vodafone in the UK, has created a new virtual mobile network for what’s described as the UK’s first customisable mini mobile phone.

CyCell will run the MVNO with a ‘white label’ credit card sized mobile handset that can be designed within days. Pre-programmed numbers can be linked to printed buttons on the phone, with all the call routing based within the network.

Tesco is the latest company to introduce free WiFi. It’s expanding its recent WiFi trial to all Tesco Extra stores nationwide.

Customers who’ve registered a Tesco Clubcard will have unlimited access; other customers will be able to use the service free for 15 minutes every 24 hours.

Mobile developers now have two new device detection databases to help them design and build mobile web sites.

The services are being offered by 51Degrees.mobi, a Reading-based business that specialises in device detection, web optimisation and mobile analytics solutions.

Mark Bridge writes:

Season of goodwill?  Not in the mobile phone industry.

Orange UK is putting its prices up next month. It says the 4.34% rise is less than inflation, so you might think customers would be pleased. You’d be wrong. Also unhappy are many people who’ve discovered Carrier IQ software embedded on their phones. Fortunately for the UK mobile industry, most of those people seem to be in the United States. And there was unhappiness in Egypt as Twitter’s acquisition of privacy and security company Whisper Systems saw Whisper’s mobile encryption applications taken (temporarily) offline.