Rachel Thomas of Apps World writes:

Babak Parviz, one of the minds behind Google Glass who has just left the company to be VP at Amazon, has been announced as a keynote speaker at this year’s Apps World Europe, from November 12-13 at the ExCeL, London.

Analyst firm Ovum has published its mobile payment and mobile advertising predictions for this year.

Ovum expects continued technology and service innovation, notably around location-based applications, in the mobile payments space in 2014. However, there will be increasing complexity within the mobile payments ecosystem this year, and on-going challenges around the business model for digital wallet services.

Mark Bridge writes:

Things didn’t look so bad in the mobile industry last week. After the shock of BlackBerry’s job losses and restructuring, it seemed as though the saga could be reaching a conclusion. On Monday shareholder Fairfax Financial announced a bid to buy the company. BlackBerry’s board of directors has approved the terms of the agreement, although it’s still able to consider alternative proposals as well.

Mark Bridge writes:

Mobile networks aren’t what they used to be. As last week’s interview with Vince Russell of The Cloud demonstrated, more and more customers are relying on WiFi to augment their mobile data service.

Truphone is now planning to do exactly the same with voice calls and text messages by linking its mobile network with WiFi for even wider coverage.

Mark Bridge writes:

Predicting the future is easy. Making accurate predictions is more of a challenge. In our final podcast of 2012 we've provided a forecast for the mobile telecoms industry in 2013 - and we've also looked back at last year's expectations.

So... what do the three of us at TheFonecast.com expect from mobile phones and wireless technology next year?