According to a new study published by research firm comScore, mcommerce usage in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK rose a whooping 80 cent over the past year.

The report also showed that about 13.5 million smartphone users in these countries accessed mobile comer sites from their mobile devices in the three month period until the end of May 2011.

BlackBerry-maker, Research in Motion (RIM) has criticized research firm, comScore alleging that the latest numbers released by the company on smartphone sales were wrong "by a wide margin".

ComScore released its latest figures about smartphone figures on in the UK on Friday. The research firm showed that BlackBerry had around 3.5 million subscribers in May in the UK. However, RIM claims the estimates were off by almost half and it has "just under 7 million subscribers" for the month.

ComScore data puts BlackBerry on the forth position in the UK behind the iPhone, handsets that run Android and Nokia, while Rim claims it is still the leading smartphone brand.

Online holiday shopping climbed to a record level on Friday with significant rise in sales across many stores. This came as a positive surprise for web retailers who have been forecasting a lackluster holiday season due to low spending in the wake of global financial crisis hitting consumer purchasing power.

Analysts said that Amazon.com, Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s online services and various other stores reported considerable rise in their revenue through increased appetite for online sales. US online spending, as reported by