Google's mobile ambitions, Nokia's man in a musical suit and the iPhone from 1983

The week in mobile news on our sister site Pocket Picks began with the first rumblings of what could turn out to be some of the biggest mobile news this side of the iPhone announcement.

It came to light that Google has invested a whopping great chunk of change (rumoured to be in the region of $13m) in Ubiquisys, a company that specialises in boosting 3G signals in homes with poor GSM and 3G mobile coverage.

A straightforward investment move, you might think, but when it transpired later in the week that Google is lobbying hard for an open mobile network and is bartering a reported $4.6bn into the equation, one would be forgiven for thinking that the internet giant has designs on a mobile network of its own. Remember, you heard it tentatively speculated about here first.

In other network news, T-Mobile, Vodafone and 3 all announced plans to support the HSDPA in boosting 3G speeds for mobile internet, with a 10x faster service mooted for imminent arrival.

So it looks like things are set to get quicker and, if 3 has its way, cheaper, too, as the operator has revealed that it is to undercut the new European standard roaming tariff by up to 47 per cent.

The other recent big announcement was Nokia's acquisition of a substantial portion of the media sharing guru, Twango, a move that will no doubt help the manufacturer continue to branch out with its multimedia aspirations.

ROK Entertainment, meanwhile, came out swaggering this week, making bold claims about laying waste to the ubiquitous iPod with its new mobile music service. The claim is certainly questionable, nonetheless the service itself sounds impressive and could potentially give iTunes a run for its money if mobile music continues to grow at the rate that it has been of late.

In the Apple camp, the biggest revelation was that the iPhone will definitely ship in major European countries by the end of September this year (we are guessing France, Germany and the UK). When it does ship, Apple will be looking to duplicate the success of the US launch, when 270,000 of the things reportedly hit the streets within the first 30 hours of release.

Also, rumours of the iPhone nano resurfaced again, while the current full-size model got a custom version of the Bloglines blog tracking site/service, as well as yet another instant messaging service, this time from eBuddy.

Other handsets drumming up some attention included Motorola's projector phone, Samsung's live video blogging L760 handset and Sony Ericsson's P3i touchscreen phone (which looks hot, hot, hot!).

Lastly, the 'are mobile masts harmful?' debate swung in favour of phoneaholics once more (but for how long?), the original iPhone from 1983 emerged, a free app that turns your phone into Mickey from Rocky was released and Nokia employed a man in a musical suit to help push its Nseries handsets.

As always, never a dull moment. Click 'Track It!' to be sure to catch next week's mobile news condensed into a single coffee break-friendly post.