The CES consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas opens to the public today following a media-only day yesterday.

Although next month’s Mobile World Congress takes away some of the focus on mobile devices, there’s still a lot of attention paid to handset announcements.

James Rosewell writes:

This year’s CES event in Las Vegas promises to be the biggest yet. There’ll be mobile phones, there’ll be tablets, there’ll be gaming devices, there’ll be sat nav – and there’ll be many other products that now include their own mobile data connection.

When you’ve got mobile data, it’s usually an obvious step to add a browser... and before you know it, consumers are browsing the internet from a device that was never really intended to visit conventional web sites.

Total royalty payments for GSM, WCDMA and LTE technology on mobile phones are approaching $20 billion per year, according to a new report from ABI Research.

It says the amount paid in licensing fees by manufacturers will continue to grow for the next few years but is starting to flatten out.

Garmin International has launched a free Android application called Smartphone Link, which is described as the first Android app to provide live services to personal navigation devices.

Any Bluetooth-enabled Garmin nüvi sat-nav device from the 2012 range can now be connected to an Android smartphone, allowing users to add traffic information, traffic camera images, weather and fuel prices to their navigation device.

Belkin, probably best known for its routers and Apple accessories, has launched two home automation products that’ll work with a mobile phone application.

The WeMo Home Control Switch can be plugged between a household appliance and the mains socket, enabling it to control anything from lights to perhaps a fan. Using the free mobile app and the home WiFi network, the plug becomes a programmable on/off switch.