New research commissioned by affiliate marketing pioneer Tradedoubler and carried out by Forrester Consulting has shown how mobile commerce is transforming consumer behaviour.

The European study revealed that 53% of smartphone users are now buying goods and services on their devices, while 71% of smartphone users are researching potential purchases via mobile.

This week's mobile industry news podcast starts with two very different stories from Nokia and Microsoft: one is announcing closures, the other is expanding its manufacturing.

We also find time to talk about roaming tariffs, mobile money, intelligent vending machines and a handful of recent mobile-related acquisitions.

LG Electronics is slowing down its tablet development in favour of its mobile devices, according to a report by Bloomberg.com.

It quotes Ken Hong from LG as saying “we’ve decided to put all new tablet development on the back burner for the time being in order to focus on smartphones”.

Computing company Intel has agreed to buy around 1,700 patents and patent applications from wireless technology business InterDigital.

The deal, worth $375 million, involves patents related to 3G, LTE and 802.11 technologies.

Microsoft has revealed a range of own-brand tablet computers called Surface.

At an event a few hours ago it demonstrated two Windows tablets:  one with an ARM processor running the forthcoming Windows RT platform and another with an Intel Core processor featuring Windows 8 Pro. The Windows RT model will be available in the US when Window 8 is launched later this year, while the Windows 8 Pro model will follow around three months later. There’s no mention of UK availability at the moment.