A new report from the Consumer Electronics Association says the average US household spent $1,179 (around £732) on consumer electronics products in the past 12 months, a drop of $201 from the previous year.

American households were calculated to contain 24 separate consumer electronics products, down from 25 in 2010.

James Rosewell writes:

Microsoft have been talking about Mango, the upcoming upgrade to Windows Phone 7 incorporating their battery-friendly flavour of multi-tasking and 499 other new features. They've also welcomed Fujitsu, Acer and ZTE to the Windows Phone fold. However there was no significant news from Nokia and Microsoft. No timeframe for handsets, nothing in fact. Both companies are being tight lipped about the partnership at the moment.

App store analyst company Distimo and games market research firm Newzoo are working together to provide monthly data on game sales and downloads across the Apple App Store in various markets.

Their first report shows that half of all free and paid app downloads across the USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium are games.

A report from TNS says the adoption of mobile finance around the world - using a mobile phone to make payments or to access bank account details - has surged in the last 12 months. Many countries saw the number of new mobile banking users increase by over 100%.

Last year in the UK, just 9.7% of people were using mobile phones to access their bank accounts - but the figure's increased to 20.4% for 2011.

New research from the Ericsson ConsumerLab team has found that found that an increasing number of consumers are using their smartphones to go online before getting out of bed.

35% of Android and iPhone users in the USA said they interacted with non-voice apps before getting up, with almost a fifth of social networking users connecting with Facebook friends while in bed.