Sony Ericsson yesterday launched a Walkman-branded music phone with an iTrip-style FM radio transmitter built in to beam songs to nearby car stereos and hi-fi units. The snag: the stylish W525 is only available in Japan. Continued

Letters Phone fury (and carrier cringes) After my piece lamenting how Nokia’s high end phones had lost their ease of use and reliability, we got a letter from reader Brendon McLean. “It’s not just Nokia!”, wrote Brendon - “but an industry-wide problem”. And he encapsulated his complaints very succinctly. So we invited him to expand a little, which he did here yesterday. Continued

Merger with T-Mobile on the cards? Deutsche Telekom is close to making a 1.6bn ($2.2bn) bid for mobile operator Orange Netherlands - owned by France Telecom. Continued

Musical convergence RealNetworks, the firm behind the Real media player and Rhapsody download site, made a significant move yesterday when it bought Sony NetServices, the Japanese giant’s European mobile music outfit. Continued

Mobile TV alone to generate €4.7bn by 2010 Mobile content is set for a revolution, with gaming, music and TV all poised to transform the market in the next five years. Continued

Too mundane for 21st century Mobile phone call volumes have dropped for the first time in 10 years, according to the annual JD Power survey. Continued

Comment Will it beat Orange to the punch? One story that sneaked past us at the end of last week was the fact that Vodafone has managed to outbid other mobile operators for the Spanish ISP Ya.com. We feel the deal presages a quadruple play move by Vodafone within the year. Continued

Letters Phone fury (and carrier cringes) After my piece lamenting how Nokia’s high end phones had lost their ease of use and reliability, we got a letter from reader Brendon McLean. “It’s not just Nokia!”, wrote Brendon - “but an industry-wide problem”. And he encapsulated his complaints very succinctly. So we invited him to expand a little, which he did here yesterday. Continued

Sony Ericsson yesterday launched a Walkman-branded music phone with an iTrip-style FM radio transmitter built in to beam songs to nearby car stereos and hi-fi units. The snag: the stylish W525 is only available in Japan. Continued

Surf’s up? Omo it isn’t… Washing powder buffs, rejoice. Buy a Tide-brand T-shirt before 25 June and you could win a Tide-brand iPod and a $50 worth of iTunes content. Continued

Opinion Will the iPhone save the mobile industry? Nokia’s recent announcement heralding the arrival of “widgets” is further proof that the entire mobile industry is a rudderless ship furiously innovating in circles. Continued

Orange has a new solution to running out of credit for pre-pay customers - an overdraft. Customers signing up to the company’s Speakeasy pre-pay tariff can get 2.50 worth of ‘overdraft’ (known as the Reserve Tank) to stay connected when… Continued

Samsung has unveiled another smartphone - the SGH-i400 - which should debut in Europe sometime in late summer. It’s a slider handset, using the Symbian S60 operating system. Details confirmed so far include a two megapixel camera, dedicated MP3 keys,… Continued