Real-time location sharing service Glympse has announced a software development kit for developers, enabling them to integrate Glympse location technology and mapping into other products and applications.

The last few months have seen Glympse used by companies including BMW and MINI, Ford, Garmin and Mercedes-Benz.

Berg Insight has forecast that the real-time mobile location-based advertising and marketing market will grow from a worldwide value of €526 million last year to €6.5 billion (£5.6 billion) in 2017, which is a compound annual growth rate of 65%.

This will be 32.8% of all mobile advertising and marketing, giving location-based advertising and marketing around 5% of the digital advertising market.

The Wall Street Journal says Apple has acquired WifiSLAM, a Californian company that uses WiFi signals to calculate a user’s location indoors as an alternative to GPS.

The deal to buy the two-year-old business is reported to be worth around $20 million.