Vodafone gobbles GPS firm

VODAFONE IS ON A BIT of a bender at the moment, defying the prophets of doom by spending cash like it's going out of fashion.

The latest on the block: Wayfinder, a Swedish company, which makes mobile applications that use GPS functionality. The price: a cool €24 million.

Voda reckons that since so many of the new phones it is selling come with GPS locators built in, having a dedicated application development team in house will allow the company to really get a leg-up on the competition, designing cooler systems than anyone else.

We envisage, for example, that top of Wayfinder's new list will be finding a way to integrate its technology with Zyb, the mobile social network that Voda paid €32 million for back in Spring. It's not hard to envisage a Vodafone-specific, location-aware social network from the carrier.

No doubt Wayfinder's current line up of apps will also find their way onto a greater variety of platforms and devices in shops at the moment. The firm makes a map app called Navigator, a fitness and running app called Active, and a database of interesting places called Wikipedia Earth, all of which work across Symbian and Windows Mobile. µ