EU regulators are looking into competition concerns surrounding a joint venture in mobile payments by Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and O2. EU regulators are looking into competition concerns surrounding a joint venture in mobile payments by Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and O2. Orange The UK’s biggest cellular operators said in June that they were creating a clearing …

Sony Ericsson’s last financial results before the joint venture ends have shown massive losses, largely due to plummeting feature-phone sales. The London-based mobile device maker’s results for the fourth quarter of 2011 and the full year, released today, revealed a 20 percent year-on-year drop in overall shipments. Added to component shortages due to the Thai floods, and significant restructuring costs …

It would be counter-productive to make voice, text, and data roaming too cheap, Telefonica has argued in response to strict new proposals by a member of the European Parliament. Excessively low retail caps would make it too unprofitable for new investors to enter the European mobile market, and stymie the Commission’s goal of increasing competition, Telefonica regulatory chief Robert Mourik …

German patent licensing firm IPCom is sending cease-and-desist letters to retailers and wholesalers of HTC’s 3G devices, even though it does not have a specific court order allowing it to do so. The company began sending the letters to around 100 German retailers, including mobile operators and major chains such as the Media-Saturn group, last night. HTC promised it would …

HTC may not be able to sell smartphones in Germany in the run-up to Christmas, after the patent licensing company IPCom said it would start enforcing an earlier infringement ruling against HTC. The judgment was actually handed down almost three years ago, when a Mannheim court said HTC was infringing on a crucial mobile telephony patent that IPCom acquired from …

Google is to stop supporting the native Gmail app for BlackBerry smartphones later this month. The company said in an “end-of life announcement” that the app will be effectively killed off on November 22, as Google has “focused efforts on building a great Gmail experience in the mobile browser” instead. (See related: “Google unveils, then yanks, Gmail app for the …

Hyperoptic, a new ISP from the founders of Be Broadband, has launched with an offer of one-gigabit-per-second fiber-to-premises connectivity for some properties in London. No other ISP offers residential customers 1Gbps connectivity, and the fastest available speed currently is Virgin Media’s up-to-100Mbps cable service. However, at the moment individuals cannot sign up for Hyperoptic’s service. Only communal installations in multi-dwelling …

Microsoft has released some of the source code for the software it uses to collect details of people’s Wi-Fi hot spots, so that it can be examined for privacy implications. In a blog post on Friday, Reid Kuhn, partner group program manager for the Windows Phone engineering team, said the publication of the code should demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to privacy …

Nokia is infringing on a key 3G patent that covers the prioritization of emergency and security services on mobile networks, the U.K. High Court has found. IPCom, the Bavarian patent licensing company that owns the “268” patent, now intends to seek a ban on the sale of 3G Nokia phones in the U.K. unless Nokia agrees to pay IPCom licensing …

The online auction firm eBay has complained to Ofcom about a lack of mobile broadband coverage in parts of the UK. According to research conducted at the behest of eBay, 16 percent of the UK remains an “m-commerce not-spot”, meaning mobile spending in such areas is at least 20 percent below the national average. The Scottish highlands and islands and …