HTC Corporation has officially opened its new European and UK headquarters in Slough today. The building will house senior management, the sales & marketing teams and the engineering teams for HTC EMEA and HTC UK.

The new HTC facility covers 6,500 square metres and was formerly the UK headquarters of O2.

UK-based mobile web specialist 51Degrees.mobi has launched a free mobile analytics service for its customers and other interested users.

Web traffic from 10,000s of mobile-optimised sites can be viewed online and filtered by country, device manufacturer and month.

The latest research to investigate the ever-growing smartphone market comes from Parks Associates.

It forecasts that over 2 billion people worldwide will own at least one smartphone in 2015, representing a growth in unit sales of over 175% from 2010. Global sales in 2015 alone are expected to exceed 800 million.

The International Data Corporation has reported that the worldwide mobile phone market grew 19.8% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2011, with smartphones gaining in popularity. A total of 371.8 million mobile devices were shipped in Q1 of 2011, compared with 310.5 million units in the first quarter of 2010.

In terms of overall market share, Nokia remained in the lead with 29.2%, followed by Samsung, LG, Apple and ZTE.

HTC Corporation has announced results for the first quarter of 2011. After-tax quarterly profit was NT$14.83 billion, up 196.8% year-on-year, while revenue had grown for the fourth consecutive quarter since 1Q 2010 to reach NT$104.16 billion, up 174.5% year-on-year.

9.7 million handsets were shipped in the first quarter, up 192% year-on-year and up 6% on the previous quarter.