UK luxury fashion brand Burberry announced a 21 per cent rise in fourth-quarter sales, after spending the past year growing a social media strategy that leads the retail sector.

The company said its success was partly due to its investment in digital technology that has helped drive customer engagement and partly because of its growth in flagship markets such as China.

At the start of 2011, Burberry rolled out a new web site, Burberry World, which allows customers to connect with all aspects of the business such as its heritage, music, video and product offers through videos and instant chat with customer service representatives.

Burberry also partnered with social media sites and now has more than 10 million Facebook fans, as well as more than 7,000 Twitter followers and has had in excess of 10 million views on YouTube, making it the world's most successful luxury fashion brand on these sites.

Burberry has also launched its brand on a number of Chinese social networking sites. The country is now home to 513 million internet consumers.

V3 attended Salesforce's annual customer event in San Francisco last year where Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts took to the stage to explain how her business had used the Chatter tool to help manage social media.

"To any CEO who's sceptical, you have to create a social enterprise today, you have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand," Ahrendts said at the time.

Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, said he had worked with Ahrendts to put the Burberry social media strategy in place.

It's a success story others in the industry and beyond would do well to take note of.

Apple is set to omit near-field communications (NFC) technology from the iPhone 5, as the world waits with baited breath for the next generation of the iconic smartphone.

Analysts were expecting NFC technology capabilities to be one of the major hardware inclusions in the much-anticipated device, along with A5 dual-core processors.

However, it appears that Cupertino has had a change of heart and users may now have to wait until 2012 for an NFC-enabled iPhone.

"The new iPhone will not have NFC; Apple told the operators it was concerned by the lack of a clear standard across the industry," a source told The Independent.

The lack of NFC in the iPhone 5 is likely to be good news for Google, which has already shipped the Nexus S with the touch-tap technology.

RIM has also confirmed that the majority of its upcoming BlackBerry devices will ship with NFC incorporated.

O2, meanwhile, announced support for NFC at CeBIT, and plans on releasing a wallet application that will allow users to carry around their "credits cards in their phones".

Apple's reluctance to get on board with NFC is unlikely to massively affect sales of iPhone 5 given the technology is still only just beginning to break through into mainstream use.

However, given the chicken-and-egg situation with many of these burgeoning mobile technologies, it could hold up the building of NFC infrastructure as various stakeholders wait until one of the world's biggest smartphone makers decides it wants in.

V3.co.uk contacted Apple but the manufacturer declined to comment on rumours and speculation. Knowing Apple though, there is likely to be some kind of a surprise in store when the device is announced.