Mobile-based music recognition service Shazam has arranged a new $30 million investment (around £20 million), which values the company at over $1 billion (£663 million).

The company has over 100 million active mobile users per month and has seen its app downloaded over 500 million times.

Shazam, which enables users to identify or ‘tag’ music tracks and learn more about TV shows via a smartphone app, has predicted the music artists that it expects will ‘break’ during 2014.

Overall, more than 400 million people use Shazam worldwide, with more than 15 million Shazam searches taking place every day.

Media engagement company Shazam, which offers a mobile-based music identification service, says its free mobile app has now been used more than 10 billion times to identify and ‘tag’ songs, television shows and TV ads.

The 10 billionth song was ‘Applause’ by Lady Gaga, which was tagged on an iOS device in the US state of New Jersey.

We start this week's podcast by talking about an Android security risk - before moving on to new 4G services from EE, a drop in Nook tablet prices and a couple of quarterly results that disappointed the stock market.

In addition we discuss insurance complaints, Bluetooth Smart technology, a new multi-million investment in Shazam and some research about the future of apps.

America Movil, which is Latin America’s largest mobile telecom network operator, has invested $40 million in mobile music recognition and media engagement company Shazam.

The money will help accelerate Shazam’s growth as well as funding the development of new products.

Mark Windle, head of marketing at OpenCloud, predicts that this year’s reduction in the number of traditional telecoms operators in some countries will provide an opportunity for other operators to innovate and capture market share in 2016.

He says next year will be a year of rapid change for telecoms… whether it’s MVNO disruption, competitive tariff pricing or simply defence from the ‘dark art’ of hacking.

Mark Bridge writes:

The most memorable moments in life often go unrecorded. You don't have your camera in your hands. Your finger is still hovering over the 'pause' button on your audio recorder. Or you were simply too busy experiencing whatever was happening. It's all about the one that got away.

That's where Kapture can help.

Mark Bridge writes:

James Rosewell shows me a colourful roll of paper that's the width of an iPhone but well over three metres long. When I look closer, I can see it's a printed copy of the Wall Street Journal's mobile website. That's a lot of scrolling to do... and a pretty unfriendly user experience for anyone reading the news online. Why does it work so badly?

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge return with their first mobile industry podcast of 2014.

This week they're looking at new Samsung, Sony and ZTE products from CES, they're talking about Android embedded in cars, they're catching up with the latest news from BlackBerry, they're discussing cheque payments by smartphone, they're revealing complaint data from Ofcom and they're investigating quite a few other stories as well.

It's our last podcast of the year, which is the traditional time for us to predict what'll be happening in the mobile phone industry during the next 12 months... from forthcoming consumer technology to deals between network operators.

As well as making our 2014 predictions, we'll also be reviewing those we made last year and discovering how accurate our forecasts for 2013 really were.

This week we're talking about a UK government deal to prevent bill shock, good news for some UK consumers visiting the USA, a court threat to HTC sales, new high-speed satellite broadband, mobile search, mobile shopping and much more.

Join Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge for an informed and entertaining look at all the major mobile industry news stories from the past seven days.

It's been a week of diverse mobile headlines in which Jolla started selling its Sailfish smartphone, mobile shopping broke records and BlackBerry's CEO looked to the future.

We're also talking about smartphones for seniors, battery life, a looming spectrum shortage, phone theft and Sony's Smart Wig. Something for everyone, surely!

In today's programme we're talking to James Atkins, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of smartphone manufacturer Kazam.

The company launched earlier this year and has just announced its first seven Android-based handsets. James explains the story behind Kazam's creation, the company ethos, its product range and its plans for the future.