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PC World: Mobile phone vendors aren’t the only ones interested in navigation. Vodafone has offered 239 million Swedish kronor (€ 22.6 million) for Wayfinder, which develops software for mobile navigation.

Wayfinder’s board has recommended that shareholders accept the offer, and shareholders holding approximately 44.9 percent of the total share capital and voting rights have done so, according to Vodafone.

Buying Wayfinder will open the door for Vodafone to develop a suite of new location-aware products and services, which will deliver a more personalized mobile Internet experience using location, if users want to disclose where they are, said Pieter Knook, Internet services director at Vodafone. Knook also hailed the user-friendliness of such products and services and support for voice directions on mobile.

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CNNMoney: Apple Inc. is adopting a more open strategy for selling its iPhone as it dramatically expands the number of countries where the combination cellphone-media player is available.

The Cupertino, Calif., computer maker’s been selling the iPhone since June through deals that call for just one operator per country to sell the phone. U.S. carrier AT&T is one such exclusive partner.

On Tuesday, Apple said its iPhone will be offered in Italy later this year by both Telecom Italia SPA and Vodafone Group Plc, the European cellphone giant. This will mark the first time two operators in the same country will be selling the iPhone simultaneously.

“This is different from how we are doing it in the U.S.,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said.

Vodafone intends to sell the iPhone in nine other countries as well.

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Electronista: Vodafone UK on Thursday announced it would add ‘unlimited’ access to the Internet and email to its monthly cell phone plans as it tries to garner a larger share of the country’s highly competitive cellular market. The world’s largest mobile telecommunications network company does in fact limit the plan to 500MB per month, as per its fair usage policy. The provider noted use of its Vodafone Mobile Internet service has grown rapidly since its launch last summer, with users accessing popular networking sites, news sites and search engines most often.

Vodafone’s research shows social networking sites Facebook and Bebo are the most searched websites among UK users on their mobile web service, and also rank as number 1 and 5, respectively, on the most-visited list.

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The Register: The phone, which is now available to buy in the UK, retains the i620′s slider design. Specifications provided by Vodafone are annoyingly vague, though the network provider does state that the i640 is a tri-band GSM/GPRS handset that also does 3G. It also has a two-megapixel camera and integrated memory card slot.

The i620, which came to Vodafone in July last year, has all these features.

From the pictures provided, it’s probably fair to assume that the i640 still measures 95 x 60 x 16mm and has a 320 x 240 pixel resolution display. Battery life seems to have been given a little boost on the i640, though, jumping to six hours talk time and 380 hours standby life, compared to 4.3 hours talk time and 350 hours standby on the i620.

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Guardian: Google has confirmed that it will be taking part in next year’s sale of mobile phone spectrum in the US, heralding its entrance into the wireless market.

The company’s executives have said over the past few months that they would be willing to spend upwards of €3,1bn buying up capacity when the Federal Communications Commission sells off part of the 700 megahertz (MHz) band.

The move means that Google could become America’s newest wireless network operator. It already runs relatively small-scale wireless internet access networks in its home state of California, but winning new spectrum would allow it to start a national network.

But the search engine giant will be fighting the auction against bidders including existing mobile phone companies AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless, part-owned by Vodafone, who are looking for more capacity for their existing networks.

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Tech.co.uk: T-Mobile has said it will sell unlocked Apple iPhones in its shops in Germany following a successful court action brought against it by Vodafone.

The iPhone will now be available to buy for a princely sum of €999 unlocked – a price that’s considerably higher than the €399 price tag of the iPhone on a two-year T-Mobile contract.

T-Mobile has also said that certain iPhone functions will no longer work if T-Mobile consumers who’ve already bought an iPhone decide to get their devices unlocked.

T-Mobile took the decision to sell iPhones unlocked after Vodafone won a court injunction against it.

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NaviGadget: TomTom just announced a new traffic service called TomTom High Definition Traffic – only avaiable in the Netherlands so far. The service is a collaboration between TomTom and Vodafone, where anonymous GSM signals is merged with existing traffic sources to deliver traffic data that covers 10x the roads, 5x more updates then regular traffic services.The first device to offer the high def traffic service will be TomTom ONE XL HD and it will be available in the Netherlands middle of this month. It’ll come with 12 months of High Definition Traffic subscription and will cost 400 €.

Here are the features of the device:

• Highly sensitive GPS receiver
• 4.3 inch full TFT colour LCD touch screen (480 x 272 pixels, 64.000 colours)
• Internal memory 1 GB
• GPRS Modem with built-in SIM card for live data connection
• SD slot (only for additional maps, SD not included)
• Internal Lithium-Ion battery (2 hours operation)
• 119 x 86 x 27 mm
• 230 grams
• Map Coverage: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, San Marino, Spain (+ Canary Islands), Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Vatican City

Here is how HD Traffic collects data:

• Traffic data generated by the movement patterns of mobile phones in cars, via Vodafone’s Dutch GSM network
• Third party information provided by traffic authorities and road operators

Vodafone’s network delivers traffic data to the TomTom XL HD Traffic every three minutes, twenty times an hour which is compared to RDS-TMC traffic info is five times more often.

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Times Online: Arun Sarin, chief executive of Vodafone, questioned the logic of a Google mobile phone yesterday, suggesting that it would struggle to distinguish itself in an already crowded handset market.

Mr Sarin claimed it was unclear what a “Google phone” would offer consumers. “What is it that is missing in life that they are going to fulfil?” he asked. “You can reach Google already through a number of devices. You don’t need a Google phone to do that.”

Speculation over a big push into mobile telecoms by the internet search giant has reached fever pitch over recent weeks. The group looks poised to launch its own, internet-enabled mobile handset equipped with tailor-made applications.

It has already fostered relationships with mobile phone companies including Vodafone, which offers Google internet search on its handsets. However, a much bigger push into the area seems likely, More than 20 per cent of mobile subscribers are set to have access to mobile internet at broadband speeds by the end of this year, making mobile the next battleground for advertisers.

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Engadget Mobile: It looks like Vodafone will be adding more holiday cheer than expected this year. Expected to launch sometime in the fourth quarter of ’07, the Samsung i560 slider looks good and seems spec’d to perform well, too. Features are said to include HSDPA, a 3.2 megapixel camera with 16x digital zoom, and a 2.4-inch QVGA display all atop S60. Look to spend around €415 for this beauty when it’s available.

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Electronista: Samsung’s vaunted F700 touchscreen phone will likely go head-to-head with the iPhone during its European launch, according to an announcement by the company. Now called the F700V Croix based on the cross-like shape of its interface, the phone will be headed to Vodafone and offer the pan-European carrier an opportunity to compete with Apple’s device. The completed version runs on a slightly larger, 3.2-inch touchscreen and still includes 3G access using HSDPA, albeit with a slower theoretical 3.6Mbps peak download rate. Its front and rear cameras will also remain for video calling and capture.

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Absolute Gadget: If you’re a Vodafone subscriber with £1.99 or €3 a week to spare, get ready to feast on all the music you can squeeze into your ears. The mobile phone company has signed a deal to provide MusicStation’s unlimited music download service to its users.For £8.62 or €12,60 a month you could be sampling as many tunes as you like from EMI, Warner Music, Universal Music and Sony BMG, as well as the leading independents.

The MusicStation software stores your files on a central server so you can access them, with your favourites or newest choices appearing on your phone.

That means you won’t miss out on songs when you don’t have access to a network, such as when you switch your handset to Flight Safe mode on a plane.

The software intelligently checks your phone to see how full it is and deletes the older tracks you’ve played the least if it needs to make room for new ones.

And because all the tracks aren’t stored on a particular device, if a phone is stolen, lost or upgraded, a customer’s music, playlists, friends and preferences are restored automatically the first time MusicStation is accessed.

MusicStation will come installed on new Vodafone 2.5G and 3G mobile phones from November, while existing users will be able to download the application through the Vodafone Live service.

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Slashphone: Option N.V. today announced that Vodafone is the first operator in Germany to offer an HSUPA data card. The GlobeTrotter EXPRESS HSUPA data card offers DSL-like performance with wireless downloads at speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps and uploads at up to the operator’s network speed of 1.45 Mbps.

Option announced its HSUPA product line, including data cards, USB wireless modems and embedded wireless modules, in February 2007 at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. Including Option’s compact Cardbus-ExpressCard Converter, Vodafone’s offer will enjoy an even broader appeal: the data card can be installed in laptops with PC Card and/or ExpressCard expansion slots.

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