HP, the world’s largest technology company, has announced what it’s calling a ‘multi-year productivity initiative’.

The restructuring scheme is expected to save up to $3.5 billion by the end of the 2014 financial year and will see around 27,000 employees leaving.

California’s Attorney General has announced an agreement that commits Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft and Research In Motion to improving privacy protection for consumers who use internet-connected applications on their smartphones.

The six companies have agreed to ensure the apps available on their platforms have a formal privacy policy.

This week’s podcast from The Fonecast starts with impressive quarterly results from Apple, along with figures from Samsung, Motorola and Nokia as well. We then move on to some of the other stories that have been hitting the headlines, including O2’s UK privacy problem and a new ‘unlimited internet’ tariff from T-Mobile.

As usual, you can listen to this week’s podcast on our website audio player, via iTunes, by using our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.

Apple, Samsung and Motorola have all published their quarterly results. We talk about these differing figures before moving on to O2's privacy problem, T-Mobile's new unlimited tariff, HP's plans for webOS and last year's growth in tablet sales.

Mark Bridge writes:

If you want a big money story from the last few days, you want Apple. The company announced its highest quarterly revenue ever, hitting $46.33 billion (£29.66 billion) with record quarterly profits of $13.06 billion. That’s probably enough money to buy the moon, assuming Newt Gingrich is prepared to sell it – or, in the real world, is one of the biggest quarterly profits ever.