Having just announced its best ever month of subscriber growth--100,000 new customers in September--T-Mobile UK will be part of a European launch of new LBS services aimed at existing web'n'walk customers. The company has agreed a deal with deCarta to provide new navigation and social applications in the UK, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands starting next quarter, with other T-Mobile markets are to follow.
Deutsche Telekom multimedia VP, Ingo Schneider, said that LBS was a core component of its mobile Internet strategy. "Notably, this new offering will give web'n'walk customers the next generation of LBS almost immediately."
Schneider added that T-Mobile would deploy deCarta's new ‘NavSearch' location-based search, mapping, and routing capabilities for mobile phones and the web, through a turn-by-turn navigation application. T-Mobile users would be able to share information across applications such as directions and favourites, and between multiple devices.
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.
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