Mark Bridge writes:

I’ve previously talked about a report from 2009 which warned how touch-screen phones that weren’t true smartphones were pushing down ARPU. Consumers thought they were buying something that was relatively advanced but were being seduced by form over function.

This week HTC stepped in to the arena with the HTC Smart, described by HTC's Peter Chou as "a more-affordable smartphone". Although it may not fit everyone’s definition of a smartphone, it certainly ticks most of the boxes. It has an open operating system, Qualcomm’s Brew platform, which has over 18,000 available applications and has been installed on over 1200 handset models worldwide.

Two interviews from this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: Jeff Taylor, co-founder of mobile phone producer INQ Mobile, and Simon Bransfield-Garth from voice security company Cellcrypt.

The three-year-old LiMo Foundation, which is committed to a Linux-based mobile software platform, has announced its fiftieth Linux-powered handset model this week.

Three NEC models and three Panasonic models for Japan’s NTT DOCOMO plus the First Else from Else Mobile have brought the group’s total number of mobiles to 50.

The LiMo Foundation also welcomed Adobe to its consortium this week, confirming plans to enable Adobe Flash support on the LiMo platform.

The number of people using banking services on their mobile phones is doubling every year according to new figures from ABI Research. It's forecast there'll be 407 million people worldwide carrying out banking transactions on their mobiles in 2015, up from 52.2 million last year. Most mobile banking customers currently come from the Asia-Pacific region, with growth in India particularly notable.

A separate ABI report notes the growth in mobile shopping, with about 8% of all online purchases expected to be made on mobile phones within five years. By 2015, shoppers worldwide are expected to use their mobiles to spend about $119 billion (£76 billion) on goods and services.