• The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has formed its Smart Energy Study Group. The team, made up of three sponsoring member companies including CSR, Broadcom and Emerson, will work together to address Smart Energy initiatives sponsored by governmental entities and other organizations interested in energy management throughout the world.
• U.K.-based mobile technologies ROK Entertainment Group is partnering with Spoken Communications. Under the deal, Spoken's speech-to-text transcription service, GotVoice, and its voice search solution, GotSearch, will be marketed under the ROK brand to worldwide mobile operators, handset manufacturers and directory-inquiry operators.
• InterDigital posted net income of $38.9 million in the fourth quarter on sales of $76.4 million, a 30 percent increase over last year. For the full year, the company made $87.3 million on sales of $297.4 million.
• Wireless communications provider USA Mobility said it made $3.6 million in the fourth quarter on $65.4 million in sales, a decline from last year's net income of $8 million on $84.3 million in sales. Company President and CEO Vincent Kelly said subscriber and revenue trends, which had deteriorated during the first three quarters of 2009, improved in the fourth quarter as general economic conditions began to stabilize.
• Bluetrek Technologies has launched an app store for its noise-cancelling Crescendo headset. The Talk2Me app store features free, voice-related services applications, languages firmware versions and optimized audio tuned firmware version for the several mobile platforms. The voice related applications include Personal Handsfree Assistant service via Dial2Do that can read your e-mails and allows you to send and reply to e-mails and send texts by voice.
• Location-based mobile marketing company 1020 Placecast has launched a new service that delivers location-triggered mobile messages when shoppers enter geo-fences that can be created around virtually any area. The ShopAlerts service has already gone through trial testing with retail marketers in the U.S. and is immediately available for commercial deployment.
• Novatel Wireless will use Qualcomm's Wearable Mobile Device module designs under a new technology agreement. The Qualcomm Wearable Mobile Device 1X and 1X EV-DO Rev. A support data, voice, integrated GPS, accelerometer and Bluetooth technologies. Novatel says the modules are ideal for the M2M and consumer electronics space.