In case you didn’t see it, forecasts were released this week that point towards mobile calls overtaking landline in the UK for the first time. With this as a background, it sure is interesting in the industry right now. Downright cuthroat, as a matter of fact. We’re on the verge of a whole new era, the latest development being an incredibly freaking exciting joint venture between Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and O2 joining forces (much to 3′s dismay) to try and win the NFC market for smartphones and not banks.

With all the jostling for the lead, it’s unsurprising that there are going to be some big losers. This week, news broke that seemed to stick that label firmly on Research In Motion.

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If you’ve not yet heard of Near Field Communications, you will do soon. Telecom groups, banking conglomerates and tech giants alike are scrambling to be ready for it, with the usual business rivalries cast aside as each sector does its level best to stamp on the fingers of the opposition. O2 and the newly-minted Everything Everywhere are trying to cut banks out completely by applying to the FSA for an e-money license; Verizon, Sprint and AT&T have formed some sort of godawful unholy alliance in America to fund the rolling out of NFC-enabled terminals. Google is killing off QR codes before they’ve really even come on to the radar in favour of NFC.

Simply put, it’s because they know it’s worth billions. Maybe hundreds of billions. And everybody is going to want a piece.

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Today – Saturday – is Foursquare day. Did you know? Chances are that unless you’re on the service, you didn’t. Actually, chances are that you’re not on the service at all.

On the face of it, Foursquare has been doing really well. 8,000,000 users! That’s a pretty great number – more than enough to impress anyone familiar with startups. But how many of those 8m accounts are still checking in? Twitter, far more important than Foursquare in every conceivable way, has 200,000,000 users, but even on such an accessible platform, just 10% of those users are actually active.

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