British Weather App Gets 5 Million Downloads:

The stereotype of the British obsession with the weather has been supported by figures from the BBC, which says that its smartphone weather app has now been downloaded over 5 million times.

The BBC Weather app, available on Android, iOS and Amazon devices, reached five million downloads within eight months of launch. This comes just after BBC Weather celebrated the 60th anniversary of its first ever TV forecast on 11 January 2014.

Available on mobile and tablet, the BBC Weather app downloads so far are roughly equally split between iOS and Android devices and on average on a weekly basis, 60 percent of usage of the app is on mobiles versus 40 percent via tablets.

Liz Howell, Head of BBC Weather, said: "Interestingly, we've seen that mobile users are most likely to check the weather at 7am on Friday mornings, whilst the most popular time for our tablet users is about 10pm on Thursday nights."

Over 100 Million Monthly Users for Opera's App Store:

Opera, the mobile browser developer says that its own mobile app store has now surpassed 100 million monthly users.

The company says that its app store saw exponential growth in its user base over the 12 last months, increasing by 172% since the close of 2012. The Opera Mobile Store currently offers more than 200,000 mobile apps and games across most mobile platforms, including Android, Java, BlackBerry, Symbian and iOS.

Opera says that its Android users showed strong growth during 2013, nearly reaching the level of Java-based downloads. Android app downloads are currently 42.7% of total downloads - up 16.8% in one year.

The top-three countries based on the number of Opera Mobile Store users were India, the United States (jumping five positions up to no. 2) and Indonesia.

Leaked Photo Hints at New Samsung Home Page Layout:

A leaked photo of what is claimed to be the new design layout for Samsung's forthcoming Android overlay has been released.

Samsung adds its TouchWiz platform on top of the Android OS, and the latest updates, leaked by the @evleaks twitter account suggests that Samsung is being increasingly influenced by Google design concepts.

The home page appears, if the photo is correct, to be more of a tile-like layout, which owes more to Google Now than to Microsoft.

Google Now, an information portal, is already included in Samsung devices, but not prominently, and is likely to remain buried if Samsung starts pushing its own version at future smartphone users.

It's expected that the new home page user interface could appear on Samsung's Galaxy S5, which is due to go on sale by this May.

Airtel offers free pre-paid mobile access to Facebook in nine Indian languages:

Bharti Airtel will offer free access to social networking site Facebook in nine regional Indian languages to its prepaid customers across the country for a limited period, the company said on Friday.

"...it will offer free Facebook access in 9 regional Indian languages to its prepaid customers across India," Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

The company said its customers who are Facebook users on the mobile (browser or app) will be able to access Facebook in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

According to Airtel, existing mobile internet customers on Airtel can immediately start connecting with their friends by visiting the Facebook mobile site m.facebook.com. Customers accessing the mobile internet for the first time need to register at m.facebook.com to avail of this special offer.

"A limited period offer, Airtel will allow customers to access Facebook free of cost with a cap of 30MB per month to add joy to the festivities," the statement added.

The company said the interface is compatible with feature, Java, Android, iPhone & Windows devices alike.

Firefox OS Smartphones Go On Sale in More Countries:

Telenor has announced that their first Firefox OS phones went on sale in Hungary last week and sales begin in Serbia and Montenegro now. The mobile network operator also announced plans to bring Firefox OS phones to Asia in 2014.

Followed by a wave of launches in Latin America in October, Firefox OS phones have also launched in more European markets recently.

In the last few weeks, Deutsche Telekom started offering Firefox OS phones through Telekom in Hungary and Cosmote in Greece. Earlier this year, Deutsche Telekom launched Firefox OS phones through T-Mobile in Poland.

Firefox OS based smartphones are now available in 13 countries with more coming soon.

In related news, Geeksphone, a Firefox OS smartphone vendor appears to be working in a new handset that can support both Android and Firefox in the same phone.

Zain to launch direct operator billing in MENA:

Zain Group, a pioneer in mobile telecommunications in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa, announced the signing of an agreement with renowned mobile solutions provider, SLA Mobile, to provide customers with Direct Operator Billing capabilities. Through this agreement Zain Group becomes one of the first operators in the region that will launch the service.

Direct Operator Billing, which is also known as Carrier Billing, will enable Zain’s customers to pay for digital goods from a third-party content or service provider by charging the transaction to their mobile phone monthly bill or using their pre-paid credit.

In regard to Zain Group’s deal with SLA Mobile, the service will provide several benefits to Zain and its customers and to the industry at large, namely:

It will provide customers the ability to easily and safely purchase apps from leading global app stores across the various operating platforms such as Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry and charge their bills or their credit balance in case of prepaid, all without a requirement for a credit card.

Customers can easily purchase digital content and services provided by Zain’s local and regional partners with merchants and app developers now being able to reach a wider audience with their products and services encouraging and driving the innovation and consumption of such content

Scott Gegenheimer, Zain Group CEO said: “By being one of the first telecom providers in the Middle East to launch a Direct Operator Billing service, we reinforce our dedication to providing customers with the best purchasing experience and we are confident this service will enable them to use mobile payments in a safe and easy manner.”

Gegenheimer continued: “The exciting world of mobile digital services is driving the mobile industry forward at the moment, with a whole new world of content and applications being developed and introduced all the time. Zain is already one of the leading technology innovators with respect to our state-of-the-art mobile broadband networks, and this investment in our networks goes hand-in-hand with our ability to offer services that enhance customer’s digital purchasing experiences.”