China's ZTE Corp, the world's fourth-biggest handset maker, plans to ship more high-end smartphones this year to help increase profit margins and revenue, a senior company executive said on Wednesday.

ZTE (Shenzhen, China) expects to ship more than 50 million smartphones in 2013, exceeding its earlier forecast, and sees smartphones making up 70 percent of overall consumer device sales this year, Lv Qianhao, head of ZTE's handset strategy, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a company event.

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.

Mobile phone service provider NTT DoCoMo Inc will soon release a low-cost tablet computer in Japan priced between 10,000 yen ($110) and 15,000 yen, the Nikkei reported.

The tablet will be made by China's Huawei Technologies Co (Shenzhen, China) and feature a 10-inch screen, the Japanese business daily said.

The new tablet will be able to connect to the Internet via wireless LAN, but will not be compatible with 3G or LTE (Long Term Evolution) high-speed wireless services, the newspaper reported.

France Telecom hopes a new deal with Chinese web giant Baidu will spur the take-up of mobile internet services in Africa and the Middle East.

The two companies have announced a partnership through which France Telecom (Paris, France) will pre-install a Baidu (Beijing, China) browser on Android devices used by customers across the Africa and Middle East regions, where it serves about 80 million customers altogether.

Data traffic on Western Europe’s mobile networks rose by 39% between 2011 and 2012, to 3,077 exabytes, according to a new report from ABI Research.

According to Marina Lu, a research associate at ABI, some 50% of subscribers in Western Europe are now on data plans and “making full use of it”.

With 4G “still attempting to find its feet”, 3G accounted for 64% of total traffic.

Despite the surging use of mobile data services, operators remain under serious pressure in other areas.

T-Mobile USA has launched a $70-a-month no-contract offer that promises an “unlimited nationwide 4G data” service to customers.

Unveiled at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the deal follows T-Mobile’s announcement last month that it would stop subsidising smartphones in 2013.

Under new arrangements, customers will be required to pay substantial upfront fees for their devices, but will benefit from much lower monthly tariffs.

AT&T Inc sold more than 10 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, a record, the company said on Tuesday.

The total topped the previous record of 9.4 million sold in the same quarter in 2011.

The latest results suggested AT&T (Dallas, USA) smartphone sales for all of 2012 will be about 26.7 million units, slightly ahead of its previous forecast of 26 million.

On Monday, AT&T rival Verizon Wireless (New York, USA) said it had its strongest fourth quarter ever, with an increase in subscribers and a rise in sales of Apple Inc's iPhone 5 and other devices.

South Korea’s operators have launched joyn services in a bid to reclaim ground lost to ‘over-the-top’ (OTT) players, although there is some confusion over whether services are yet interoperable between the three companies.

In a press release on its website, SK Telecom (Seoul, South Korea) said that customers can now make use of joyn services like ‘Rich Call’ and ‘Rich Messaging’ – under the joyn.T brand – allowing images to be exchanged during voice calls and SMS to be used with more instant messaging features.

US mobile giant Verizon Wireless has been forced to pay a $1.25 million fine by the country’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for imposing restrictions on its mobile-phone customers.

According to the FCC, Verizon had blocked customers trying to access certain data applications, contravening the terms of its “C-block”, 700MHz spectrum license.

When Verizon received that license it was on the condition that it allowed customers to freely use the devices and applications of their choosing.

On Monday, Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable announced that they will allow each other's high-speed Internet customers to access their metro WiFi networks, totaling over 50,000 hotspots.