An American company called Tune Hunter says Shazam and a number of other companies have infringed its patent (first filed in 2000). Samsung, Apple, Shazam, Amazon, Napster, Motorola, Gracenote, Cellco, LG, AT&T and Pantech have all been named in legal action that seeks damages and an injunction. The patent awarded to Tune Hunter in 2005 "relates to a music identification/purchasing system, specifically to a method for marking the time and the name of the radio station in portable device such as a key holder, watch, cellular phone, beeper or the like which will allow the user to learn via internet or regular telephone the name of the song, artist and/or music company by matching the stored data with broadcast archive."

Mobile virtual network operator Blyk says it won’t be launching any more advertising-funded MVNOs. Instead it plans to work in partnership with mobile networks to offers its expertise and to increase the scale of its operation. Although the UK’s Blyk operation won’t be affected immediately, the decision has caused speculation about Blyk UK’s future as an independent venture – and the possibility of selling the customer base of 16-24-year-olds to Orange, upon whose network the UK service runs.

A study released during the WWW 2009 Madrid conference, which debates the evolution of the web, looked at the ways mobile search users differed from computer-based search users. By comparing Google searches on computers, iPhones and conventional mobile phones, the researchers found that the average mobile user was much more focussed than the average computer user and was more likely to search for the same type of information repeatedly, while users of high-spec devices (such as the iPhone) searched in a similar way to computer users.