Visa Inc. and Visa Europe have certified a number of NFC-enabled smartphones from Samsung, LG and Research In Motion for use with the Visa payWave contactless point of sale application. The Samsung Galaxy SII, LG Optimus NET NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 have all been added to the list of Visa-compliant payment products.

This means financial institutions can work with mobile operators to offer consumers one of these mobile devices with Visa mobile payment functionality.

Sony Ericsson is showing visitors to this year’s CES trade show what a Sony smartphone is expected to look like. Assuming, of course, all goes to plan with Sony’s plans to buy Ericsson out of the joint venture.

The Sony Xperia S is the first smartphone from the ‘next generation’ Xperia NXT series and is expected to go on sale worldwide in the next month or two.

Mark Bridge writes:

As 2011 draws to a close, many of us start looking towards 2012 and wondering what’ll be happening in the mobile phone industry. Here at The Fonecast we’ve invited a handful of industry experts and business leaders to offer us their thoughts about the coming year.

Today’s podcast contains analysis and insight from Hans Eriksson, Steve Litchfield, Dr Windsor Holden, Dr Mark Smith and Jack Wraith MBE.

A new report by IMS Research says 35 million NFC-equipped mobile phones have been shipped worldwide this year - with the figure expected to approach 80 million by the end of 2012.

The research business also notes the increasing number of partnerships involving Near Field Communications.

Mark Bridge writes:

This time of year sees many pundits from within the mobile industry doing their best to predict events that’ll grab headlines in the next 12 months. In fact, we’ll be offering our own predictions in a couple of special podcasts lined up in the next few days.