London-based mobile phone ticketing company Masabi is receiving $4 million from mobile technology investment business m8 Capital.

The money will be used to support m-ticket deployment with UK rail companies, for the development of new service features and to help Masabi expand into new markets.

The latest company to join the mobile ‘personal broadcasting’ scene is Spreaker. It’s aiming to do for audio what Twitter does for text and YouTube does for video - and it’s just released its iPhone app.

An Android app is expected shortly.

This week sees Iain taking a rare break from The Fonecast, so it’s up to Mark and James to hold the fort. They start with Nokia’s Windows Phone announcement before moving on to Visa Europe’s big investment in mobile payments, Sony’s split with Ericsson, Samsung’s smartphone success, a new design-led BlackBerry and some wide-ranging patent news from Apple.

Listen to the programme on our website audio player, via iTunes, by subscribing to our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.

Mark Bridge writes:

Atria Books, part of the Simon & Schuster publishing family, has released what it’s calling the first-ever smart book. A thousand copies of ‘The Impulse Economy’ by Gary Schwartz will have an NFC sticker attached, providing a web link to book-related content.

Hmmm. That’s not really a smart book, is it?  The same kind of logic means my NFC credit card turns my wallet into a ‘smart wallet’ and transforms the pocket of my jeans into ‘smart jeans’. It means my NFC-equipped smartphone is a smart smartphone.

With Iain away this week, Mark and James discuss the week's mobile industry news - from Nokia's new Windows Phone handsets to Samsung's success and a multi-million pound investment in mobile money.