While long suspected, the reasons for ex-CTO Rich Green’s departure from Nokia have this week become clear. The Finnish firm’s first and last Meego-based handset was released Tuesday, while the OS itself was formally executed with a view to what’s left being assimilated by the LiMo and Linux Foundations.

Chip manufacturer Intel is teaming up with Google to ensure that future releases of the Android operating system are optimised for Intel’s Atom processors. Intel said that it wants to step up its efforts in the lucrative smartphone arena at the opening keynote of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

The world’s smartphone users will download a total of 18 billion mobile apps during 2018, up 144 per cent from 7.4 billion in 2010, according to Ovum. The firm forecast that the number of downloads will grow to 45 billion in 2016.

To have a future strategy, means to have a mobile strategy, says Ian Carrington, mobile advertising sales director at Google.

Google’s entry in the mobile phone hardware market with the acquisition of Motorola Mobility seems to be the outcome of the company’s desire to acquire the 17,000+ patents that Motorola holds and compete more effectively with Apple and other smartphone/OS vendors. The acquisition will however, not only have an impact on the handset market but possibly will also have a big impact on the mobile services market. In particular, this may help Google to accelerate the growth of the m-commerce market.

Web giant Google has agreed to acquire handset vendor Motorola Mobility for $12.5bn. “The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem,” Google said.

Orange’s pan-African operations have partnered with Google in a bid to exploit SMS as a platform for delivering Google services to low-end devices in use across Africa and the Middle East.