49% of smartphones sold around the world will be running Android at the end of 2012, according to a report from Gartner.

Total worldwide smartphone sales are expected to reach 468 million units this year, which is 57.7% up year-on-year. Android is forecast to have 38.5% of those sales, making it the world's most popular mobile operating system.

This week's podcast starts with news about mobile phones at the London 2012 Olympic Games... and ends with a newspaper being fooled by a ghostly iPhone application. In the middle you'll find mobile payments, takeovers, Facebook, wireless patents - and much more.

New figures from GfK Retail and Technology UK show that the Android operating system is becoming increasingly popular.

Smartphones accounted for almost half of all mobile phone sales in February 2011 (48.7%). When it came to 'pay monthly' contracts, 83.1% were smartphones... which means only a sixth of all contract phones sold were non-smart.

Figures from the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker show that the global smartphone market is expected to grow by 49.2% this year. That's over four times faster than the overall mobile phone market.

More than 450 million smartphones are expected to be shipped in 2011, compared to 303.4 million units shipped in 2010.

Nokia produced the largest number of smartphones last year - but Apple generated more revenue from the smartphone market. That's the conclusion of a new report from Strategy Analytics.

It's calculated that the smartphone market was worth a total of $99 billion in 2010, almost double the 2009 figure.