The Apple Watch, originally announced in September last year, is to go on sale in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the USA from Friday 24th April.

It’s a companion device for customers with an Apple iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus.

Here’s an edited transcript of our new monthly podcast, broadcast on 30th January 2015.

[Iain Graham]: Hello, it's Friday 30th January 2015. Welcome to this month's edition of The Fonecast. That’s right, you heard correctly: we’ve temporarily moved to a monthly format. If you’d like to join 51Degrees in sponsoring the podcast and returning us to weekly programmes, please get in touch via our website. Now, on with the show.

Mark Bridge writes:

What’s the secret of Apple’s success? That’s the question I was asked earlier this week by LBC radio during a report on Apple’s impressive iPhone sales and its record quarterly results.

So here are six reasons I think Apple is doing so well at the moment.

New figures from Strategy Analytics show that Samsung and Apple each produced 74.5 million smartphones in the final quarter of 2014, giving each of them just under a fifth of the total smartphone market.

It’s the first time the two companies have been this close with quarterly shipments since the end of 2011.

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.