According to a new research report by the analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of mobile subscribers downloading navigation routes and turn-by-turn navigation instructions using their mobile handsets increased twofold from H1-2008 to H1-2009 and reached 28 million.

Until 2015, the subscriber base is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.7 percent to reach 160 million users worldwide.

INTERVIEW: Mobile operators are searching for new and innovative ways to generate revenues beyond service plans.
Julien Oudart, sales and marketing director for French mobile advertising company Sofialys, tells smartphone.biz-news about the opportunities open to carriers from opt-in subscriber databases.

INTERVIEW: Known for its hardware products, wireless solutions specialists Option is transforming itself in the face of fierce competition and plunging margins.
The company's marketing director, Jan Poté, tells smartphone.biz-news how the company is expanding to offer complete end-to-end solutions - ranging from its Ucan virtual 'PC on a stick' to designing the system board for Sharp's new 3G Sidekick LX messaging phone.

INTERVIEW: As mobile operators in Europe rush to comply with legislation to protect consumers from massive roaming and SMS/MMS bills, Amit Daniel, vice president of marketing for Starhome, tells smartphone.biz-news about the challenges - and the advantages - the new rules will bring.

Demand for GPS-enabled mobile phones will slow in 2009 but will avoid the fall in shipments expected to affect handsets generally.
At least that's what ABI Research is predicting. It forecasts that feature-rich smartphones will post year-to-year unit growth through the current economic downturn.

iPhone owners are the single largest source of mobile WiFi data traffic worldwide, particularly in the US and UK, according to AdMob.
In the US, the Apple handset represents 50.6 per cent of all requests from handhelds of any kind, followed by the iPod touch, which accounts for 28 per cent of the requests.
The best non-Apple device, Sony's PSP, only manages 13.1 per cent of this traffic.

UK-based Vodafone is to acquire Swedish firm Wayfinder for USD $29.4 million-
The move is being seen as a bid by Vodafone to boost its location-based services (LBS) offering and drive mobile data growth.
Wayfinder's services are available in 19 languages to a global user base of more than 2 million.

Smartphone users worried about what would happen to confidential info in old handsets can sleep a little easier.
Aiko Solutions has come up with what it claims is an industry-first - software that really does erase all data from a smartphone.

Salary details, financial data, bank account details, sensitive business plans, notes from board meetings and personal medical details are being discovered by buyers of second hand smartphones.
Nearly a quarter of re-sold smartphones contain sensitive data, with BlackBerry owners identified as the worst offenders for discarding their handsets with company and personal information.

While the iPhone and Google’s HTC-made G1 may be introducing a more consumer-oriented market to the smartphone, it is still very much a business tool.
The high-end handsets are being used to carry increasing amounts of confidential data, yet only 35 per cent of companies have a mobile device security strategy in place.
Smartphone.biz-news.com spoke to Larry Ketchersid, chairman and CEO of Media Sourcery, about how it’s helping enterprises with mobile workforces securely distribute confidential information.

The increasing numbers of smartphones on flat-rate data plans, coupled with ever-improving handsets, is leading to a surge in mobile search, according to comScore.
It has published the results of a survey which show that searching the internet from a mobile phone is gaining in popularity in the United States and Western Europe.

The mobile software market will be worth an estimated US$ 67.3 billion in 2013 – up from US$ 17.9 in 2007 – as the number of mobile devices grows and minutes of use increases steadily.
This revenue growth will be fuelled by mobile carriers’ willingness to carry data apart from voice and the introduction of third-generation (3G) smartphones.
That’s the conclusion of analysts at Frost & Sullivan in their report “World Next-Generation Mobile Software Market”.
They say that with the expansion of memory, an increase in processor speed and the availability of better networks that allow for faster data transfer, mobile software is in for exponential growth.