But when it comes to mobile banking, consumers in the UK are more reluctant than those in other parts of the world.

KPMG surveyed 9,600 consumers aged between 16 and 65, across 31 countries.

When buying goods or services, the majority of customers (both in the UK and globally) now said that they look at social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and online review sites.

“From buying goods on their mobile phones to keeping up with friends on social networks, consumers are increasingly reliant on a range of technologies that perform important – yet often overlapping – tasks,” said Tudor Aw, KPMG’s European head of technology.

“This new ‘converged lifestyle’ will have huge implication for retailers.”

Eighty eight per cent of respondents in the UK and worldwide reported downloading an app to their mobile.

In the UK, 74% of consumers said they were more likely to buy flights and holidays online and six in 10 used some form of online grocery shopping.

In the US, by contrast, the same amount would book flights but only 21% said they were more likely to buy groceries online.

But when it comes to mobile banking, only 27% in the UK said they had used some form of mobile banking in the past six months.

That compares with 52% globally – a massive jump from just under 20% in 2008, according to the audit firm.

Consumers in the UK are also more reluctant to embrace the cloud – storing their data online rather than on their own computers – with 53% of respondents saying they do some compared with 65% globally.

“The report also shows that consumers’ concerns over privacy and data security have increased over the last few years and companies across all sectors need to take this concern seriously,” Mr Aw said.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is treated by many retailers as the start of the Christmas shopping season. They offer one-off discounts to mark the occasion.

Analysts said heavy promotional activity helped drive demand.

By comparison, a report by Shoppertrak suggested that in-store Black Friday sales were up by 7% on last year, at £7.12 billion ($11.4 billion).

Around 50 million Americans visited online retail sites on Friday, according to Comscore.

It said Amazon was the most popular destination, with 50% more visitors than any other retailer.

Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple were next in line, said the analytics company.

“Despite some analysts’ predictions that the flurry of brick-and-mortar retailers opening their doors early for Black Friday would pull dollars from online retail, we still saw a banner day for e-commerce,” said Comscore’s chairman, Gian Fulgoni.

IBM Coremetrics also noted a trend towards shopping on smartphones and tablet computers.

It said Black Friday purchases made on mobile devices had accounted for 9.8% of all online sales, compared with 3.2% last year.

IBM described mobile shoppers as having had a “laser focus” since they had been more likely to view a single page on a retailer’s site rather than browse what else was for sale.

IBM said Apple’s iPhone and iPad had generated the most mobile internet visits to online stores, accounting for more than double the traffic originating from devices running Google’s Android system.

The company also noted a jump in Black Friday related chatter on social networks. It recorded a 110% rise in discussion volumes after consumers had shared tips on how to secure products before they sold out and the best places to park.

Friday’s internet sales are expected to be eclipsed today on what is referred to as Cyber Monday – which many experts believe will be the US’s busiest online shopping day of the year.

Close to 123 million Americans plan to make an online purchase according to a survey commissioned by the US National Retail Federation, an industry lobby group. That would be a 15% increase on last year.

NRF said nearly eight in ten online retailers would run special promotions including “flash sales that last an hour” and “free shipping offers”.

The federation also highlighted the shift to mobile devices, saying it expected 17.8 million Americans to use them to shop today, nearly five times the number in 2009.

“Retailers have invested heavily in mobile apps and related content as the appetite for Cyber Monday shopping through smartphones and tablets continues to rise,” said Vicki Cantrell, executive director of the NRF’s website shop.org.

UK internet retailers said it was less clear which day will be the UK’s busiest online shopping day this year.

“Over the last couple of years we have seen a fortnight of peak activity over the period corresponding to both this and next week,” said Andy Mulcahy, a spokesman for the industry body Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG).

“We expect £3.72bn will be spent online over the two week period.”

Mr Mulcahy said that although some retailers are trying to generate interest in the idea of a cyber event in the UK, but they are split over which day to mark.

Visa Europe said it believed today will be the UK’s busiest internet shopping day, with £303m spent online.

eBay has forecast that it would experience its peak in activity this Sunday with more than 5.5 million people expected to log onto the UK version of its auction website.

Amazon said it expected to experience more demand the following day.

“In recent years, the first Monday in December has been Amazon.co.uk’s busiest day with orders for over 2.3 million items being placed on Monday 6th December last year,” said Christopher North, the website’s managing director.

The firm had earlier forecast growth of 20% to 30%.

HTC, the world’s fourth-biggest smartphone brand, blamed increased competition and weakening demand.

Analysts and the markets were surprised by the statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

In October, the company had warned that fourth quarter revenue was slowing, predicting 125bn to 135bn New Taiwan dollars (£2.6 billion- £2.9 billion), compared with T$135.8bn (32.81 billion) in the previous three months.

Although HTC did not give a specific forecast for Wednesday’s further downward revision, it said it predicted no growth compared to the same period last year. HTC’s revenue in the last three months of 2010 was £2.166 billion.

Analysts said the grim outlook could be blamed on lack of new products to compete with an expansion in Apple’s distribution channels in the US.

However, the company said it expected a pick up in revenue in the first half of 2012.

Chief Ombudsman Lewis Shand Smith says that is because it is becoming more common for people to download big files, like videos, onto mobiles.

He says that has led to a rise in the number of customers being affected.

As technology improves it is becoming more common for people to download bigger files.  Those include songs, videos and emails with large attachments.

Communications Ombudsman Lewis Shand Smith thinks phone companies could do more to warn people but says they are doing nothing wrong under the current regulations.

He said: “Most mobile operators are playing by the rules, so that then begs the question are the rules what they ought to be? Customer satisfaction is always a priority and there are several ways people can keep track of exactly how much data they use.”

He’s calling on mobile phone operators to do three things:

• First of all, be very clear about what they mean by unlimited in the advertisements;

• Secondly, give advice to consumers so they know when they’re reaching their limit;.

• Thirdly, give advice on the amount of data that’s being downloading.

In a series of statements the big five mobile phone operators said: “There are a variety of different tariffs and deals that let customers manage their bills effectively.

“Customer satisfaction is always a priority and there are several ways people can keep track of exactly how much data they use.”

Depending on your download connection the amount of data you use for one song is roughly 3 megabytes, for a three-minute video it’s 15 megabytes and for a half hour TV show it’s around 350 megabytes.

Everything Everywhere, which runs the combined T-Mobile and Orange groups in the UK, has said that 65% of its contract customers are now using smartphones.

The company siad that it’s user base was stabilising, after losing 227,000 pay as you go customers but gaining an extra 185,000 contract users in the three months to September.

It said 85% of these new contract customers were choosing smartphones.

It blamed new Ofcom regulations which cap charges between providers for a 1.9% fall in revenues to £1.55 billion.

Without the cuts the firm said underlying revenues grew by 3.8%.

Ofcom introduced price capping regulations on mobile termination rates in April 2011.

Mobile termination rates are charged when a call is finished on a different network to the one the call was made from.

Everything Everywhere is Britain’s largest mobile phone company with over 700 retail stores and 27 million customers in the UK.

Net sales fell 13% to £8 billion.

Nokia has lost ground to competitors such as Apple’s iPhone and phones using Google’s Android operating system.

Shares in the Finnish phonemaker have plunged 41% so far this year.

Nokia said it sold 16.8 million smart devices in the quarter – 38% less than the previous year.

But the volume of mobile phones Nokia sold in total rose 8% to 89.8 million – reflecting its strength in cheaper and simpler so-called “dumbphones”.

The company’s new range of smartphones will use Microsoft’s operating system instead of Nokia’s legacy Symbian software.

“I am encouraged by our progress around the first Nokia experience with Windows Phone,” Nokia boss Stephen Elop said.

“We look forward to bringing the experience to consumers in select countries later this quarter.”

Earlier this year, Nokia announced thousands of job cuts as part of a 1bn-euro cost-cutting programme.

In April, it said it would cut 7,000 jobs – with 3,000 of the posts being transferred to consultancy group Accenture – as part of a strategy to focus on smartphones.

“The planned changes we have initiated are difficult, but necessary in order to align the company to our strategy,” Mr Elop said.

Apple fans and staff from the store counted down the seconds until the store officially opened at 9am. Moments later customers emerged from the shop excitedly clutching the new piece of technology.

However, staff at the Covent Garden store were coy about the availability of the new phone.

“It’s very hard to judge how easy it will be as we don’t know how many people are going to come. The volume of phones we have in replicate the high demand and if you come early, say 8am, you will have a good chance of getting one,” one shop assistant said.

The smartphone’s UK launch repeated scenes similar in Australia and Japan, which were among the first countries to release of Apple’s new iPhone 4S.

The iPhone is the world’s biggest selling smartphone and some analysts expect fourth-quarter iPhone shipments to be as high as 30 million units, almost double last year’s figure.

It might look the same but the iPhone 4S is significantly faster than its predecessor, with a new camera and – this year’s most attention-grabbing feature – a clever voice control service called Siri. In hindsight, this year’s upgrade makes sense: it mirrors the 2009 upgrade from iPhone 3G to iPhone 3GS.

Overall, the iPhone 4S is a good upgrade to a very good phone.

It retains the stylish design of the iPhone 4 and gives it a substantial boost. It’s certainly not cheap when you consider some of the alternatives but it feels like a luxury product and it’s an absolute joy to use.

If you own the iPhone 4, then whether you upgrade or not depends on how tempted you are by Siri and the new camera. The upgrades in iOS 5 might be enough for iPhone 4 owners. 3GS owners should be in the queue already.

Bolt on iOS 5 – the new version of the operating system – and iCloud, Apple’s cloud storage service, and you have a pretty compelling package. It’s especially compelling for those iPhone 3GS owners whose two-year contracts are just coming to an end.

It will run the latest iOS5 operating system, which is set for release on 12 October.

The event was the first major announcement for new boss Tim Cook who took over from Steve Jobs in August.

The iPhone 4S, which will go on sale on 14 October, will be available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models – in both black and white.

It has the same look and feel as the existing iPhone 4 which was launched 15 months ago.

However, Apple said that updates to iOS meant the phone would boast some “200 new features”.

Shares in Apple fell by almost 5% within minutes of the eagerly anticipated launch, with analysts saying that investors and Apple fans had expected the latest version to be a more radical improvement over its predecessor.

However, the company’s shares later regained most of their losses to close down just 0.6%, albeit underperforming the NASDAQ index as a whole.

Among the additions is  a voice recognition software or a “intelligent assistant” that allows users to ask questions aloud and receive detailed answers back.

Siri, which began life as a third-party app, was purchased by Apple in 2010 but has yet to appear within its software.

Details of the new phone were unveiled by Apple’s Philip Schiller

For Apple’s new chief executive, the event was as much about making a statement about his leadership as it was new products.

Tim Cook had previously acted as interim boss, looking after the company while Steve Jobs was on sick leave.

Unlike his charismatic predecessor, Mr Cook left the biggest announcement of Tuesday’s event to a colleague – marketing boss Phil Schiller.

Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has seen its second quarter profits more than halve- hurt by low demand for its older models

The firm started to roll out new smartphones but only late in the quarter.

Net profits fell to £208 million for the three months to 27 August, from £498 million in the same period a year earlier.

In July, the company said it would cut 2,000 jobs – 11% of its workforce – as part of a shake-up of its operations.

Revenue for the second quarter fell to £2.65 billion, a drop of 10% on the same three months last year.

During the quarter, RIM shipped some 10.6 million Blackberry smartphones and about 200,000 Blackberry PlayBook tablets, which was well below analysts’ expectations.

Following the results announcement, RIM’s shares fell by as much as 10% in after-hours trading in New York.

The Canadian firm said it expected business to improve in the third quarter though, forecasting shipments of between 13.5 million and 14.5 million smartphones and revenues of between £3.31 billion and £3.5 billion.

Broadband and landline contracts which automatically tie customers into long term deals will be banned from December Ofcom has warned.

Ofcom estimates that around 15% of UK residential customers are on such rollover contracts.

BT is one of those using them. Other residential providers include Adept Telecom, Axis Telecom, Eze Talk and iTalk, while TalkTalk Business, Titan Telecoms and Optimum Calls offer ARCs to business users.

Ofcom’s chief executive Ed Richards said: “ARCs raise barriers to effective competition by locking customers into long term deals with little additional benefit.”

The sale of such contracts will be banned from 31 December.

Michael Phillips, from price comparison website BroadbandChoices, said it was “great news” for consumers.

“Automatic renewal was locking some consumers into services that were no longer suitable for their requirements and were often less competitively priced than newer offerings,” he said.

Ernest Doku, technology expert at price comparison site uSwitch.com said: ”

“Relying on consumer apathy, providers have tried to cling on to customers by forcing people to opt out of a landline or broadband contract.

“Hopefully now the emphasis will be on providing the best service and support possible, so that consumers actively choose to stay with providers, rather than stay with them by default,” he added.