Samsung Electronics is filing preliminary injunction motions in France and Italy, asking the courts to block the sale of Apple’s iPhone 4S.

It claims two patents involving 3G Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) standards are infringed by the new Apple device.

O2 Recycle, the two-year-old project that pays customers for old phones and raises money for charity, has launched a week-long challenge to set a new world record.

The O2-supported scheme is asking mobile phone users to visit their nearest O2 store from 7th to 13th October 2011 and donate an old mobile phone.

Mark Bridge writes:

Much of Bletchley Park’s history involves code-breaking and intercepting radio messages so - when Over The Air 2011 brought hundreds of mobile developers to the site - it seemed appropriate to explore the subject of mobile phone security.

In particular, there were a couple of sessions on the agenda that caught my eye. Detective Sergeant Andy Williams of the National Mobile Phone Crime Unit started by talking about stolen phones... and asking if mobile applications could help with this problem.

Mark Bridge writes:

One of the speakers providing inspiration for the mobile developers at Over The Air 2011 was Denise Stephens, co-founder of Enabled by Design. Her presentation, called ‘Design for All goes Mobile’, explored how good design could help mobile phone users live more independently than they would otherwise be able to.

A new report from Juniper Research expects the gross merchandise transaction value of mobile payments for physical goods to exceed $170 billion worldwide by 2015.

That’s almost three times this year’s forecast of $60 billion.