New research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 74% of smartphone owners use their phone for real-time location-based information, with 18% using a geo-social service to ‘check in’ or share their location.

Although smartphone ownership among Americans has risen from 35% of adults in 2011 to 46% in 2012, the overall proportion of US adults who use location-based information has increased much faster.

O2 UK has created a new international roaming deal for customers with a ‘pay monthly’ contract. O2 Travel will launch in July 2012, providing customers with fixed charges when they travel in Europe.

Voice calls will use minutes from the customer’s standard tariff allowance with a one-off 50p charge per call. Data usage will be charged at 25MB per day for £1.99.

Telecoms giant Telefónica has published results for the first quarter of 2012, including details of the O2 network run by Telefónica UK.

O2 UK ended the quarter with 22.3 million mobile customers, having seen ‘pay monthly’ contract customers increase by 5% to account for 50% of the total mobile customer base. However quarterly revenue fell by 6% year-on-year to 1,719 million Euro, blamed on a difficult trading environment and mobile termination rate cuts.

With Facebook’s stock market flotation expected to go ahead next week and a company value of between $77 billion and $96 billion being anticipated, the social network is putting the finishing touches to its paperwork.

It’s just filed an amendment to its original registration statement in which it warns that the increasing use of its mobile services may cause a problem.

It looks as though the market for mobile payments is getting increasingly competitive.

Stockholm-based iZettle, which lets iPhone and iPad users accept payment from ‘chip and PIN’ cards via a plug-in card reader, has just eliminated its fixed transaction fee of 15 Euro cents per transaction. Consumers taking payments on their iOS device now just pay 2.75% of MasterCard, Visa or Diners Club card transactions or 3.75% of American Express transactions.