With Europe at the forefront of the M2M revolution, revenues from M2M services are expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 33% between 2011 and 2016 in a selection of European markets, including Germany, France, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the UK.

Such is the finding of new research from Frost & Sullivan, which reckons the number of SIM connections will rise to 75 million in 2016, with the UK emerging as the biggest market and Germany a close second.

Worried about what your dog is chewing on when you're at work, or whether your home is secure while on vacation? New apps can transform old smartphones into remote security cameras for home monitoring systems.

Presence, which was launched late last month, converts a spare Internet-connected iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch into a free video camera with real-time video and audio streaming, and motion detection and notifications.

India’s Bharti Airtel is partnering with Finnish phone maker Nokia on the sale of communications services in Africa, reports Dow Jones Newswires.

Under the contract signed this week, Bharti Airtel (New Delhi, India) will reportedly sell Nokia (Helsinki, Finland) services that include mobile-phone software and an internet browser.

Customers will be able to pay for the products through their normal billing arrangements with Bharti Airtel.

The Indian operator plans to launch the services in Kenya before introducing them to other East African markets.

VimpelCom has struck a deal with Microsoft and Nokia that will allow its customers to buy digital content from the Windows Phone store via their mobile accounts.

The operator says the cost of any application, game or music will either be deducted from a customer’s prepaid card or added to the monthly bill.

A Spanish mobile application that pays users up to 25 euros ($34) a month to send messages to friends if they accept advertising may erode telephone operators' revenue as customers switch to free messaging services.

Barcelona-based Chad2Win has attracted close to 100,000 users, who receive one cent for every advertisement they see, and three cents for every ad they click on, since its launch last month, director Fernando Troyano told Reuters.

Apple Inc's shareholders have been hit by one of the bloodiest weeks in the history of the stock, but wider fallout from such weakness might be more important to the long-term value of their investments.

While Apple's iPhones, iPads and Macs remain gold standards, signs the company is losing some of its edge in the smartphone market suggest its clout with business partners could wane.

Recent comments from executives at phone carriers and component suppliers show they see room for at least some shift in the balance of power.

Spain has become the first country in the world where mobile-phone customers can make use of joyn services across all the major networks.

The announcement by the GSM Association, the industry group behind joyn, notes that Telefonica (Madrid, Spain), Orange (Paris, France) and Vodafone (Newbury, UK) have taken the steps needed to provide a fully interoperable service.

Orange, the mobile brand of France Telecom, launched a global free calling and texting application on Thursday, in direct competition with services such as Skype, WhatsApp and Viber.

Telecom operators around the globe have suffered as free calling and texting services have proliferated over the past few years. The apps allow users to communicate without using their voice or text allotments, leading some operators like KPN (The Hague, Netherlands) to complain about the hit to their bottom line.

Middle East telecommunications firms are discussing the idea of creating a pan-Arab online platform that would earn them more revenue from their networks by challenging Facebook (Menlo Park, USA) and other Internet behemoths of the West.

The ambitious project faces technical and financial obstacles and may never be implemented on a large scale.

Three public interest groups plan to file a formal complaint accusing AT&T Inc (Dallas, USA) of violating U.S. Internet rules if the wireless service provider goes ahead with a plan to limit use of Apple Inc's (Cupertino, USA) FaceTime application to certain customers.

The groups -- Free Press, Public Knowledge and the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute -- gave AT&T notice in a letter on Tuesday that they plan to file a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, unless the No. 2 U.S. mobile provider changes its policy.