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The HTC M9, the Taiwanese mobile-maker’s rumoured new flagship phone, could come in two variants, according to the estimable liege of leaks @evleaks.

The pair of handsets purportedly feature similar thin–bezel designs and a large front–facing camera.

However, the larger screen model appears to have a physical home button that resembles some of Samsung’s top–end devices.

Rumours about the M9 have been flying for weeks. HTC is said to be bringing its Ultra Pixel camera to the front of its new phone, ditching it round the back for a more traditional sensor.

The design is also said to follow the cues of last year’s One (M8) and 2013’s One.

HTC is holding a special event on March 1st, just ahead of Mobile World Congress, when it is likely to show off its new phones.

The company will be hoping to build on a successful 2014, when it managed to begin to turn things around after a dire few years of slow sales.

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Sky has officially confirmed it will launch its own mobile network in 2016, making it the latest TV provider to offer so–called quad–play services.

The TV giant has struck a deal with O2's owner Telefonica for access to its network in a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) partnership.

There’s no word on how Three's parent company Hutchison Whampoa, which is in talks to buy O2, feels about the deal.

But it’s unlikely to complain about having access to million of TV subscribers looking for cheaper, all–in–one packages.

Last year, Sky announced it was trialling a MVNO service with Vodafone.

However, the latter has lost out and is now set to be left as Britain’s smallest mobile provider. TalkTalk also ditched Vodafone for O2 for its MVNO service in 2014.

Sky and Telefonica’s deal now means you’ll be able to buy TV, broadband, landline and mobile access in one go from four different providers.

TalkTalk, Virgin and BT, which is in the process of buying EE, are all other already offering packages or working on new deals.

That means prices for entertainment and communications should come down as long as you buy everything together.

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Smart shipments totalled more than 1.28 billion in 2014, making it the most successful year ever for connected devices.

Data from research firm Strategy Analytics reveals that Google’s Android dominated proceedings, accounting for a massive 81% of all handsets. That’s a billion phones using the platform.

Apple, meanwhile, took 15% of the total, with 193 million phones sold during the year.

In a separate piece of research, Strategy Analytics said that Apple’s 74.5 million iPhone sales between October and December matched that of all Samsung smartphones put together in the same period.

Strategy Analytics did not split its Android figure up by manufacturer, although IDC has also released figures which show Samsung squeaking into the number one spot with a 20.01% market share.

Apple is a close second with 19.85%, while Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi complete the top five.

That’s not to say this is good news for Samsung. Of the top five, it was the only company to show a sales decline in the last quarter of 2014.

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Apple with processors that will make the next generation of iPhones tick, bolstering a rival in the process.

Apple is understandably giddy about its success.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus show that consumers were desperate for larger Apple handsets, to the point where they seem to be choosing them over ailing iPads.

The struggles of Apple’s tablet are well documented, but with consumers opting for iPhones instead, Apple won’t be too disheartened. Its margins on phones are bigger than on tablets after all.

The challenge for Apple now is to match those results or at least stay the course.

That could prove impossible seeing as the 2015 iPhone update is expected to be iterative, although the Apple Watch is likely to give it extra cachet over the coming months.

But having seen Samsung come up on the rails before, Apple will be acutely aware of the need to keep innovating.

This is a company that was dismissed in some quarters after Steve Jobs’ death. Now it’s bigger than ever before.

For Samsung, there’s everything to play for.

But if it has another awful year, expect pens to be sharpened and more comparisons to be made with the struggles of the likes of HTC in recent years.

The days of it trying to be all things to all people are surely numbered.

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 MaasTaari PaDuchu Pellam

It’s been a week of contrasts for two of tech’s biggest players.

Last Wednesday Apple not only posted record sales of iPhones, smashing the 74 million mark in the three months from October to December.

It also managed to make a net profit of £12 billion, the biggest quarterly profit in global corporate history.

Meanwhile, its big name rival Samsung revealed that earnings from its smartphones and mobile division were down by 62% year on year.

While the Korean company did not say how many phones and tablets it had sold, it did confirm that its numbers were down compared to 2013.

This is all such a far cry from two years ago, when Samsung was in the ascendency and Apple’s ability to innovate was being called into question.

The Korean giant was sticking it to Apple on the shop floor and in the courtroom, turning itself into the world’s biggest mobile-maker and churning out new devices at an unerring rate.

But complacency, not to mention defeat in US courts and punishing fines over patent infringements, has left Samsung reeling.

In emerging markets, local suppliers are killing Samsung with their cheaper devices and similar services.

At the top end, Apple’s superior design quality and its decision to finally boost the size of its iPhones, coupled with Samsung’s distinctly average releases in the last 12 months, have put the squeeze on too.

Samsung is now in real danger of losing its place as the world’s premier phone manufacturer.

Its experiment with its own Tizen operating system seems doomed, meaning its reliance on Google’s Android is unlikely to end any time soon.