A report from Gartner says the number of mobile payment users worldwide will exceed 108.6 million in 2010, which is a 54.5% increase from last year. This represents 2.1% of all mobile phone users.

Asia/Pacific is the leading region for mobile payment, with 2.6% of all mobile users - 62.8 million people - making payments on their phones. The report also notes that the Short Message Service (SMS) is still the dominant mobile payment technology in developing and developed markets.

With a message of “We thought rationing ended in the 50s”, BT has weighed into the unlimited mobile data debate. It's started offering BT Total Broadband users unlimited access to 1½ million BT FON and BT Openzone WiFi hotspots across the UK. A downloadable mobile application to find these hotspots is also planned.

The company points out that many of its customers are also O2 mobile users "who are about to have their 3G access rationed as they upgrade to new devices".

Toshiba is celebrating 25 years of laptop production by announcing some innovative new products that'll arrive later this year. The forthcoming Toshiba AC100 has an ultra-slim laptop form with a 10-inch screen but runs the Android operating system. It promises up to 8 hours battery life (or a week on 'standby'). A WiFi-only version is due in August, with a a 3G-equipped model expected to follow.

A new report from Pyramid Research has calculated that the total download volume of free and paid applications will increase from 5.7 billion in 2009 to 41.1 billion in 2014. However, the proportion of free apps is increasing. Including downloads from operator portals, the proportion of free downloads increased from around 30% in 2008 to 54% last year – and is expected to keep growing until 2014, when it'll stabilise at around 80%.