According to a Forbes magazine report, Asia's richest man, Li Ka-Shing has supposedly made a $50 million investment to acquire a minority stake in the online streaming music service, Spotify, which is looking at global expansion and is likely to offer more premium services.

In the past, Li has not only invested $120 million in Facebook, but has also associated himself with Skype through one of his countless ventures, TOM Online, to facilitate the Internet telephony company's entry into China.

Incidentally, Li Ka-Shing, who is worth nearly $15 billion, is the Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa - the company that owns the mobile manufacturer INQ, as well as the UK's mobile phone network Three. As a direct consequence of Li Ka-shing's investment in Spotify, the INQ CEO, Frank Meehan, has been appointed a member of the Spotify board.

As such, there are expectations galore that the next-gen INQ handsets will have Spotify integration, or at least 3 Network with integrated Spotify features, if not a dedicated Spotify phone straightaway!

In fact, with the present generation of INQ phones being restricted to Java applications, it is quite possible that the new INQ phones may have a Java Spotify app too, thereby extending the functionality to a much wider audience.

Thus far, INQ has launched some highly-focused phones, including a couple of Twitter phones, a Facebook phone and a Skypephone!