Samsung and Visa have announced plans to introduce mobile payments to the UK in time for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Both companies are sponsors of the London 2012 event.

There'll be a Samsung Olympic and Paralympic Games mobile phone provided to athletes and also available to the general public. The phone will also require a Visa-enabled SIM card to enable NFC contactless payments.

Acer CEO and company president Gianfranco Lanci has resigned from the company today.

Company chairman JT Wang has taken over this role in the interim, while Walter Deppeler - previously deputy president of Acer Europe, Middle East, Africa - has been appointed as the new Acer EMEA President

Unified communications service provider Outsourcery has sold its Vodafone mobile voice and data business to Daisy Group plc.

Daisy Group paid around £12 million for Hamsard 3155 Limited, the holding company of Outsourcery. Outsourcery's cloud-based services and connections via the O2 network will continue to be available through a new company called Outsourcery Hosting Limited.

MobiWire has launched its new user interface for Android smartphones. The news follows the company's transformation in February, when it changed its name from Sagem and first revealed its user interface plans.

Surface UX enhances the standard Android user interface. It claims to simplify and improve usability - and also introduces 'Surface Apps' that appear as branded on-screen widgets.

New figures from GfK Retail and Technology UK show that the Android operating system is becoming increasingly popular.

Smartphones accounted for almost half of all mobile phone sales in February 2011 (48.7%). When it came to 'pay monthly' contracts, 83.1% were smartphones... which means only a sixth of all contract phones sold were non-smart.