BlackBerry’s BBM Music app has left beta in Canada, the United States and Australia. There’s still no news about UK availability or pricing, although RIM has confirmed the service is destined to arrive here.

BBM Music uses the BlackBerry Messenger service to let customers share music with friends.

Berg Insight has calculated that the number of smart electricity meters installed across the USA and Canada will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22.5% between 2010 and 2016, reaching 87.4 million in five years.

This means that smart meter penetration among residential electricity customers in North America will have increased from around 20% now to more than 50% by the end of 2016. By 2020, approaching 100% smart meter penetration is expected.

Independent mobile ad network InMobi has published research that looks at the anticipated Apple iPhone 5, which is expected to be announced next week.

It’s found that 41% of mobile users in the USA, Mexico and Canada plan to buy an iPhone 5 - and over half of them expect to make the purchase within six months of launch.

Mark Bridge writes:

This weekend, you could have picked up a HP TouchPad webOS tablet for $99. Both the HP USA online store and Best Buy in Canada were selling the obsolescent devices at a substantial discount.

Yet over here in the UK, we've seen nothing except a prize draw from The Carphone Warehouse and a less-than-£90 discount from Amazon. And I don't expect anything much better in the short-term.

Visa Inc. has announced plans to introduce a 'digital wallet' in the United States and Canada this autumn. The service will store details for Visa and non-Visa accounts, offering NFC payments through the Visa payWave application.

Other payment options, including online transactions, retailer discounts and person-to-person money transfers, will also be available.