Visa Inc. has announced plans to introduce a 'digital wallet' in the United States and Canada this autumn. The service will store details for Visa and non-Visa accounts, offering NFC payments through the Visa payWave application.

Other payment options, including online transactions, retailer discounts and person-to-person money transfers, will also be available.

Google's I/O 2011 developer conference has seen the company talking about its Android mobile platform.

It says there are now 100 million activated Android devices around the world, with 400,000 new Android devices activated every day. The Android Market has seen 4.5 billion downloads and currently has 200,000 free and paid applications available.

Global shipments of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets increased almost 97% in 2010 to 295 million units, according to a new report from Berg Insight.

Shipments of GPS-equipped phones are expected to reach 940 million units in 2015, a compound annual growth rate of 28.8%.

Last week we saw figures from Juniper Research that predicted almost 300 million NFC-capable smartphones by 2014, the equivalent of at least 1 in 5 worldwide.

This week Pyramid Research is also predicting a dramatic increase in NFC phones. By 2015, it reckons 28% of total smartphone sales - around 250 million units - will be NFC-enabled devices.

Juniper Research has published a new report that forecasts rapid adoption of Near Field Communication services over the next three years.

It expects there to be almost 300 million NFC-capable smartphones by 2014; the equivalent of at least 1 in 5 worldwide. Half all those NFC smartphones are expected to be in North America, followed by Western Europe.