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When tapping into the GPS coordinates of a mobile phone, it can be costly, especially when a company is charged each time someone looks up their location. To combat that, the mobile-social network provider Loopt said it is partnering with a Qualcomm ( NSDQ: QCOM ) subsidiary, which provides GPS data for a monthly fee. The deal between Loopt and SnapTrack, will let Loopt to get social mapping and other location services without the heavy fees, GigaOm reported . This is obviously a critical step if location-based services are truly going to take off on the mobile phone industry. If it's too costly to provide location information, GPS will be limited to certain applications, rather than becoming a pervasive technology that can run in the background to deliver ads, find friends, or conduct local searches. Release . Smartphones are already getting into position to take over the location-based market from portable navigation devices (PND). In a report released today , Canalys VP Chris Jones said: "With GPS being built into the majority of smart phones, and users increasingly being given maps on their phone by default, and multiple reasons to use them, the threat to PND vendors is rising quickly." Canalys navigation is still seeing strong growth, especially in the North Amercia, where shipments grew nearly 50 percent. However, shipments fell 6 percent in Europe, where Nokia ( NYSE: NOK ) is the third-largest navigation provider, trailing behind Garmin and TomTom. Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now!

A trio of new research reports detail the dramatic and swift rise of mobile in terms of subscription growth, mobile web usage and mobile payments for goods downloaded to mobile phones. On Pace For 5.2 Billion Mobile Subscribers By 2011 Last year there were three times as many people using mobile phones than land lines worldwide (3.3 billion and 1.1 billion respectively), according to Infonetics Research. Mobile subscriptions jumped 31 percent year-over-year while land line subscriptions declined 5 percent in the same period. Latin America and the Caribbean are the only regions where land lines are expected to grow. Strong growth, no surprise, is expected to be primarily driven by voice services in Brazil, Russia, India and China – countries where double-digit GSM subscriber growth rates are common, the firm concluded. Based on the current rate of growth, it predicts there will be 5.2 billion mobile subscribers by 2011, at which time there will also be one wireless broadband subscriber for every four wireline broadband subscribers. ( Release ). 1.7 Mobile Web Users By 2013 The number of subscribers using the internet on their mobile phones is expect to nearly triple from 577 million today to more than 1.7 billion by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research. Social networking, user-generated content, instant messaging, location-based services and search and discovery are all driving a more open environment where users can share, collaborate and exploit content free from carrier restrictions, the firm wrote. Asia is expected to be the largest market for mobile web where almost 416 million users are anticipated to be surfing the internet on mobile phones in five years. Currently, 190 million users are accessing the mobile web there in those regions. Juniper Research predicts South America holds the "greatest untapped potential for mobile web" because of relatively low wireline broadband penetration in those countries. ( Release ). 2.1 Billion Mobile...

Mobile social networks will experience a steady growth curve, but making money on them will remain difficult, according to a report published by In-Stat . It estimates that by 2012, there will be about 30 million "millennials," or gen-yers in the U.S. using a mobile social network. Internationally, that number will soar from 525 million this year to 975 million in 2012, reports ComputerWorld . But the big problem is not in adoption, but in finding a way to make money. In-Stat concluded that the three primary ways to generate revenue on mobile social networks is advertising, subscription services and premium upgrades. Still, with those options available, In-Stat estimates that advertising revenue in the U.S. will only total $1.5 billion this year, increasing by less than 50 percent to $2.2 billion in 2012.

Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), the London-based trade association, is launching a new initiative today that will explore mobile social networking in the U.S., France, India, Italy and the U.K. to determine ways to generate revenues, discover new business models and establish a way to protect consumer protection. The organization said 60 percent of its members identified social networking as a top priority, and a 2006 survey with Informa, forecasted that mobile communities and user-generated content would be worth $13.2 billion by 2011 worldwide. In this initiative, MEF said it will develop best practices for different geographies to ensure members meet local regulatory standards. In each country, three members will study social networking and generate a plan, schedule and communications outreach. To date, most social networks have started off online and moved to mobile. It will be interesting to see if the MEF can clearly outline the unique opportunity in mobile. Release.

Just 1.7 percent of all UK mobile subscribers (812,000) used a mobile social network in Q108, according to new Nielsen research. Even so, the research firm said the space could be "could be the next big thing". It said 44 percent of mobile phone users belonged to web-based social networks, and a quarter of them used such sites whilst mobile. So whilst the takeup from the overall pool of mobile users is low, it was never a given that all mobile users would take to the social nets. Convincing a quarter of all mobile-owning social net users to try out the services whilst wireless is not bad going at this early stage. Identifying the leading sites is pretty easy - they're exactly the same as in the desktop web world, with Facebook's m.facebook.com getting over 557,000 hits (nine percent of all UK mobile web users) in the quarter. But travel net Where Are You Now? fares much better on mobile (seventh against 21st on desktop). Related RIM And Microsoft Entering Consumer Market a MySpace And Facebook Already Biggest Mobile Social Networks