4G Connections to Increase at a CAGR of 69 Percent Between 2013 and 2018:

The worldwide population is expected to continue its steady growth over the next five years from its current 7.1 billion people. ­Worldwide wireless connections are also expected to grow from 6.5 billion connections in 2013 to reach almost 9 billion in 2018. Due to the proliferation of mobile devices, the global wireless penetration rate will rise from 91.8 percent in 2013 to 120 percent in 2018.

Aside from the increase in the number of connections, the other major change over the forecast period is the shift from 2G to 3G to 4G.

For example, in 2013, 2G connections comprised 63 percent of all mobile connections. As these 2G connections decline over the next five years, 3G connections will become predominant. Fourth generation technologies, primarily LTE, will also see rapid growth globally, increasing from just 2.7 percent of all connections in 2013.

First Android Bootkit Virus Has Infected 350,000 Devices:

An anti-virus company is warning about what it says could be one of the first mass-distributed bootkit viruses seen on Android smartphones.

Russia based Doctor Web says that the Trojan resides in the memory of infected devices and launches itself early on in the OS loading stage, acting as a bootkit. This allows the Trojan to minimize the possibility that it will be deleted, without tampering with the device's file system.

It's currently estimated that the virus has infected more than 350,000 mobile devices belonging to users in various countries. Although the bulk of the devices are in China, they have also been detected in Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Brazil, the USA and some Southeast Asian countries.

To spread the Trojan, which entered the Dr.Web virus database as Android.Oldboot.1.origin, attackers have used a very unusual technique, namely, placing one of the Trojan components into the boot partition of the file system and modifying the init script which is responsible for the initialisation of OS components.

Cambodia's First 4G Network Launches in Phnom Penh:

Cambodia's Smart Axiata has announced the launch of the country's first LTE network, with support for theoretical peak download speeds of 55Mbps.

Coverage is currently limited to a select number of indoor venues, but will become available across Phnom Penh city before the middle of the year.

Smart Axiata is a company formed from the merger of Hello Axiata and Smart Mobile last February, and at the time had around 5 million customers.

Mr. Thomas HUNDT, Smart Axiata's Chief Executive Officer, spoke at the launch event, "We are starting the 4G LTE journey with the 4G LTE Experience Zones, covering areas where especially urban youth and young professionals, typically power users and early adopters, gather to spend their time apart from their home, work or study places. The coverage will then be enlarged in the next weeks and months to cover whole Phnom Penh and beyond."

He also noted that 90% of the country's total internet traffic comes from mobile devices at the moment, indicating a strong market for the LTE upgrade.

ZTE Says It Will Listen to Customers in the Future:

ZTE has unveiled a new, consumer-centric global mobile device strategy, lead by the recently-announced Global Head of Mobile Devices, Mr. Zeng Xuezhong.

However, the strategy seems basically "listen to customers" and nothing that would be generally considered to be different from any other company was announced.

In fact, saying that they are now customer centric raises valid questions as to who they thought they were making products for in the past.

"This new strategy builds upon the great success we've already achieved by working with carriers to develop products," said Mr. Zeng in a statement. "We're now incorporating more insights directly from consumers and focusing more intently than ever before on the needs and wants of our end users around the globe, in order to develop a wider range of excellent devices at affordable prices."

ZTE Shuffles its Senior Management Around:

ZTE has announced that its Mobile Devices division is to operate as an independent unit of the company, to be headed by Mr. Zeng Xuezhong, Executive Vice President of ZTE.

Mr. Zeng was previously in charge of ZTE's operations in China. Mr. He Shiyou, Executive Vice President of ZTE and the former head of terminals, will remain as an Executive Director of ZTE.

Mr. Pang Shengqing, Senior Vice President of ZTE, has been appointed as head of ZTE's enterprise business while Mr. Zhao Xianming, Executive Vice President of ZTE, has been appointed Chief Technology Officer of ZTE.

"In 2014, the company is excited about the opportunities in enterprise and mobile devices, and the organizational changes will strengthen our capabilities in these areas," said Mr. Hou Weigui, Chairman of ZTE. "Telecommunications and technology are intensely competitive industries, and it is vital that we constantly renew ourselves in order to excel."

"It is important for the company to become faster, more entrepreneurial, more youthful and more focused," said Mr. Shi Lirong, President of ZTE. "We need to execute changes in our strategy, our organization and our culture in a responsive and timely way."

LG expands 'Knock' as standard feature in L series II:

LG Electronics (LG) announced that its Knock feature (formerly known as KnockOn) will be included as a standard feature in the company's key mobile devices in the future while its line of L Series II smartphones will receive Knock through a global Maintenance Release upgrade starting in January 2014. Knock was first introduced in LG G2 as a convenient way to turn the smartphone on and off by tapping twice on the display since the power button was located on the back of the phone.

Then Knock was featured in a tablet for the first time with the LG G Pad 8.3 followed by the G Flex curved smartphone, which also shared the rear button design of the G2. A version for LG's best-selling L Series II was developed to offer the feature to as many customers as possible after the company noticed a positive reaction of audiences to this new feature.

McAfee Forecasts Growth in Mobile Ransomware and Security-Aware Attacks in 2014:

McAfee Labs has released its annual 2014 Predictions Report, analyzing 2013 trends to forecast the threat landscape for the coming year.

In 2014, McAfee Labs expects to see the rapidly growing mobile platform draw the lion's share of threat innovation. Ransomware is expected to proliferate on mobile devices, as virtual currencies such as Bitcoin fuel the growth of ransomware across all platforms. Attacks using advanced evasion techniques will come of age, with enhanced capabilities to identify and bypass some sandboxing and other local security measures.

Social platforms will also be used more aggressively to target the finances and personal information of consumers, and the intellectual property and trade secrets of business leaders.

"With target audiences so large, financing mechanisms so convenient, and cyber-talent so accessible, robust innovation in criminal technology and tactics will continue its surge forward in 2014," said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. "The activity in mobile and social is representative of an increasing 'black hat' focus on the fastest growing and most digitally active consumer audiences, in which personal information is almost as attractive as banking passwords. The emergence and evolution of advanced evasion techniques represents a new enterprise security battlefront, where the hacker's deep knowledge of architectures and common security tactics enable attacks that are very hard to uncover."

Digital note making app Evernote embraces paper:

Evernote is one of the most popular note-taking applications on mobile devices. The five-year-old Redwood City, California-headquartered company has had a phenomenal growth globally and, of late, in India too. With the tagline 'We help the world remember everything,' it has constantly innovated, expanding the scope of the 'note' from mere digital text to photos, voice, webpage and even handwritten ink notes.

Evernote's GM, Apac, Troy Malone, was in Bangalore recently, and spoke of the new features and growth in India.

The Nautiz X1 Ultra-Rugged Smartphone is Now Shipping:

Handheld Group, a manufacturer of rugged mobile devices says that it has started shipping the Nautiz X1, a waterproof, dustproof and shock-resistant smartphone.

The company said that the first batches are completely sold out.

The Nautiz X1 is part of the Nautiz product family of rugged and ultra-rugged PDAs and smartphones. It has an IP67 ingress protection rating, which means it's fully dust- and waterproof and can withstand immersion in water, and it also meets MIL-STD-810G military test standards for enduring humidity, vibration, shock and extreme high and low temperatures.

"This is the toughest smartphone ever built," said Jerker Hellström, CEO of Handheld Group. "We see a huge demand for truly rugged smartphones among field professionals and outdoor enthusiasts who want to be constantly connected. We're excited to see the great response this product receives from the market."

The Nautiz X1 is slim and lightweight, weighing in at less than 180 grams (6.3 ounces). It has a 4-inch special sunlight-readable capacitive touchscreen and ultra-durable Gorilla Glass. It runs on a 1 GHz dual-core processor and has 1 GB of RAM. It features Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a compass, a professional u-blox GPS, and a 5-megapixel camera. The Nautiz X1 comes with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5 operating system, and runs on both GSM and CDMA networks. Multiple battery options enable a full day's work in the most demanding environments.

IPhone Still Rules SMBs, but Apple Needs to Keep an Eye on Samsung:

Apple devices accounted for three-quarters (76%) of all mobile device activations on Intermedia's desktop sync network since January 2013.

Intermedia's customers use its service to synchronize their mobile devices with their desktop computers.

With over 190,000 activations, Apple accounted for six out of every eight mobile devices activated by Intermedia's SMB customers, despite other studies showing Android's overall lead in market share.

Intermedia's annual report also finds that Samsung has pulled ahead of the competition in the past two years to establish itself as the No. 2 device manufacturer among Intermedia's SMB customers -- surpassing activations of all other Android manufacturers, as well as Windows and BlackBerry mobile devices.

"Small and medium-sized businesses are choosing Apple for mobile delivery of their cloud IT services at an incredible rate," said Michael Gold, president of Intermedia. "Many customers already leverage Intermedia services on smartphones and tablets as the primary front-end for running their business. Samsung and Apple will compete intensely for these business users by driving down prices, extending functionality, and addressing SMB needs like security. This means the ultimate winner will be businesses themselves."

China Mobile selects Micropross NFC Forum test tools for acceptance testing:

China Mobile, one of the world’s most important mobile network operator, has selected Micropross NFC Forum test tool for compliance testing of NFC enabled devices, before allowing them to be sold on the China Mobile point of sales.

NFC (Near Field Communication) is one of the most discussed technology of the moment, because it paves the way for new use cases around mobile devices, such as smartphones, or tablet PC. Those use cases include payment, exchange of data, and easy synchronization with other hardware such as headsets. The number of NFC enabled devices grows on a daily basis, and in order to verify the good interoperability between those devices, Micropross has developed a full range of compliance platforms, aiming at payment (EMVCo), NFC (NFC Forum) and general contactless (ISO) conformance testing.

China Mobile, in order to ensure the best experience to their users, have the strict policy of submitting all devices submitted by their different vendors to a full acceptance round, in their own laboratories. With the growing momentum of NFC, it became important for China Mobile to include tests for this technology, and after a comprehensive evaluation process, they selected Micropross Contactless Test Station as the tool they would use for this purpose.

ZTE Achieves TM Forum’s Frameworx 12.0 Conformance Certification:

ZTE Corporation(“ZTE”), a publicly-listed global provider of telecommunications equipment, network solutions and mobile devices, has announced that ZTE’s ZSmart BSS/OSS V8 has successfully achieved TM Forum’s Frameworx 12.0 Conformance Certification.　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

TM Forum’s Frameworx Conformance Certification is an independent verification of how a solution’s business processes and information models align with the industry standards found in Frameworx, including the Business Process Framework (eTOM) and Information Framework (SID)

ZTE ZSmart BSS/OSS V8 is the latest IT software and service suite developed by ZTE, which can provide end-to-end operation support for operators. Based on the unified SOA architecture, ZSmart BSS/OSS provides comprehensive functional components and product suites that can be flexibly combined and configured to help operators cope with rapidly changing markets and customer requirements. In addition, ZSmart BSS/OSS V8 provides many innovative solutions, including intelligent charging and policy control which can be adopted to help operators realise intelligent traffic operation and precise marketing, complete OSS upgrades and IT reconstruction, and explore new commercial models to face the new challenges of the age of data.

Apps, data changing mobile:

Mobile voice revenue is declining fast, while data use is surging, driven by instant messaging and apps, say new reports on the state of mobility in South Africa.

The findings of two reports -The Mobile Consumer in SA 2014 and The Mobile Internet in SA 2014, were presented at a media briefing in Johannesburg, South Africa, this morning. The studies, by World Wide Worx in partnership with FNB and Dashboard Research, found that 65% of South Africans – around 13 million people – now have internet access. Around 29% - 5.8 million of them - access the internet using mobile devices only, while 32% - or 6.4 million – access the internet using mobile devices and laptops or PCs, and 4% -  under one million - access the internet using only laptops or PCs.

Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, said voice usage is declining steadily, particularly among younger cellphone users, while data spend is surging. In the biggest data user group – people aged 19 – 24, only 56% of mobile budget is spent on voice (down from 66% last year), while data spend has increased from 17% last year to 24% currently. Overall, voice spend has dropped from 73% of mobile budget to 65%, while data has increased from 12% to 16%. At the beginning of 2010, voice stood at 77% and data at 8%. All ages are moving to increase dat

US FCC to carriers: Voluntarily provide mobile unlocking rights, or face rules:

The top U.S. telecommunications regulator on Thursday demanded that wireless providers voluntarily agree on the rights of consumers to unlock mobile devices once contracts end, or the Federal Communications Commission will make it a rule.

At issue is whether cellphone buyers, who often get new devices at a heavily subsidized price in return for committing to long-term contracts, should be able to take their gadgets with them when they change carriers.

The FCC and the wireless trade group CTIA have been working for eight months on developing a policy for the industry's Consumer Code that would address the rights of phone owners to unlock their devices.

In a letter to CTIA President Steve Largent on Thursday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler urged the industry to adopt the new unlocking policy within weeks, before the holiday shopping season.

"Enough time has passed, and it is now time for the industry to act voluntarily or for the FCC to regulate," Wheeler said in the letter posted online.

According to Wheeler's letter, the carriers agree that consumers should be able to unlock their devices once their contracts are fulfilled but have not agreed to a policy of notifying customers when their device is eligible for unlocking or automatically unlocking the device when it becomes eligible.

"Absent the consumer's right to be informed about eligibility, any voluntary program would be a hollow shell," Wheeler said in his letter.

The ban on unlocking originates in the U.S. copyright law overseen by the Library of Congress. The White House in March responded to an online petition protesting the law and sided with the thousands who signed it