After a disappointing 2004 mobile businesses may have been hoping for a better 2005: they didn't get it. 

At the start of the year 3G subscribers were growing slowly, the devices had limited applications and consumers still weren't staying on their phones long enough to justify the enormous cost of the licences. In the background regulators were rumbling about prices and competition rules. 

In the wider sphere 3G still hadn't found its killer app and the industry was searching high and low for one. Hardware sales were strong, and a growing percentage of sales were in alternative mobile devices.

But the growing power of mobile phones had attracted the first serious virus writers and mobile spammers. 

There was a mixed bag of outcomes on all of these fronts, overall more positive than negative. But the elephant in the living room was the growing threat to mobile operators from Wi-Fi. 

Hardware sales of mobile devices have continued to grow strongly in 2005 and there are now more mobiles than people in the UK. Undeterred by the odd health warning people continued to buy and replace mobile hardware, keeping sales buoyant if inefficient. 

Nokia continued to dominate, with smartphones and mobile devices proving most popular. Cameraphones are also increasingly commonplace and proved useful in the wake of the 7 July bombings. 

This growth wasn't just limited to the pure mobile phone. While sales of unconnected PDAs stuttered, mobile devices like RIM's BlackBerry proved almost too popular, although increased competition and legal problems have caused real harm to the Canadian company.