Ordnance Survey, the UK government department responsible for mapping, has launched its first official mobile application for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

OS MapFinder is free and includes a basic overview of Great Britain; customers can then add the same level of detail as printed OS maps by buying 10km x 10km ‘tiles’ from 69p each.

Belkin has expanded its WeMo home automation range with a couple of announcements at CES 2013.

Not only is it adding Android compatibility to what was previously an iOS-only app, it’s also introducing new devices.

A new research report from Analysys Mason predicts that Windows Phone will become the fastest-growing smartphone operating system in the next five years. However, it will still only have a single-digit percentage share of the smartphone market in 2017.

Last year, Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS was shipped in 11 million devices. In 2017 this figure is expected to reach 136 million units; approximately the same number of Apple devices shipped in 2012.

Real-time mobile location sharing service Glympse has announced a new partnership with satellite navigation company Garmin that’ll see location-sharing capabilities added to the Garmin StreetPilot Onboard and Navigon mobile apps. Existing customers can update their iPhone or Android apps free via the Apple App Store and Google Play.

The update enables users to share their location with friends from within the app while they travel to their destination.

Smartphone penetration across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom hit 54.6% during the three-month period from August to the end of October 2012, according to the comScore MobiLens service. It found that Spain had the highest smartphone penetration in Europe (63.2% of mobile phone users) followed by the UK at 62.3%.

Spain also had the most dramatic growth, up almost 15 percentage points from last year.