The latest research from Nielsen shows that 46% of all US mobile consumers had smartphones in the final quarter of 2011, with 60% of purchasers in that period choosing a smartphone.

Most smartphone users are choosing Android-based devices, although the launch of the Apple iPhone 4S boosted iOS sales towards the end of the period.

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.

In today’s podcast feature we’re taking a look back at the mobile industry’s biggest news stories of 2011.

As well as revisiting Apple’s emotional year, we discuss the Nokia & Microsoft partnership, Android’s growth, Samsung’s sales, RIM’s disappointments and LG’s 3D products… along with the Amazon Kindle, mobile payments and patent disputes.

Iain, James and Mark take a look back at the mobile industry's high points and low spots from 2011. Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung and RIM all come under the spotlight, along with legal action, mobile payments and tablet sales.

Happy New Year!  We’re back with our first podcast of 2012, containing the biggest mobile industry news headlines from the past couple of weeks. That means we’re talking about everything from tweeting in court to AT&T, from BlackBerry takeovers to (yet more) patent battles.

As always, you can listen to this week’s edition of The Fonecast on our website audio player, via iTunes, by subscribing to our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.