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Market research firm ComScore today released a study of the smartphone market in Europe showing that smartphone adoption in the EU5 (U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy) has grown 32 percent versus a year ago to 51.6 million subscribers.

The U.K. market strongly leads in growth of smartphone adoption over the past year, growing 70 percent to more than 11 million subscribers. France ranks second in growth with the number of smartphone subscribers up 48 percent to 7 million. Meanwhile, Italy boasts the largest number of smartphone subscribers overall (15 million) but showed the softest growth in this market at 11 percent.

According to market research firm IMS, annual smartphone shipments to Asia are expected to more than quadruple between now and 2015, giving Asia 39% of smartphone shipments during 2015.

Overall shipments of smartphones are forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 25.9% between now and 2015.

According to IMS Research analyst Chris Schreck, “There are two key drivers for the booming Asian smartphone market. First, the cellular markets in China and India continue to develop, especially with 3G networks expanding in China and expected to rollout soon in India. The populations of these countries are significant enough to drive substantial smartphone growth, even if smartphones make up a relatively small portion of the country’s total handset shipments. Secondly, smartphones are becoming increasingly affordable. As the minimum hardware components required to support smartphone features continues to decline in price, smartphones have become mass market devices, rather than luxury purchases.”

Google unveiled full Street View coverage for Google Maps in the United Kingdom. Around 238,000 miles of UK public roads are now available in Street View according to a Google press release.

As everybody knows, Google cars collecting Street View picture are indeed what Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ usually call “mapping vans”, fitted with the latest technologies. Besides offering nice pictures of the sunny Kingdom, a full Street View coverage indicates that the Mountain View company is getting closer to launch their own UK maps instead of relying on Tele Atlas data and their partner Ordnance Survey.

We can also expect soon thereafter their free mobile navigation system to hit the market as they did in the United States.

Google has also built a nationwide coverage of Street View for Spain, France and Italy, they said in the same press release. In addition, they have an agreement with Dutch map maker Automotive Navigation Data (AND) to use their navigable maps of Western Europe, comprising of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The future will tell if Google Maps navigation will first launch in the UK or if they will wait to go for a wider move, at least across Western Europe.

According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global shipments of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets increased 92 percent in 2009 to 150 million units. The market research firm expect shipments to reach 770 million units in 2014, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38.7 percent.

Berg Insight anticipates high attach rates of GPS also in new low-cost smartphones about to enter the market. In addition, GPS will become more common in mid-range feature phone models during 2010.

Last week wireless operator Vodafone publicly announced the closure of its Sweden-based mobile navigation subsidiary Wayfinder. Currently, Wayfinder has about 95 employees in Sweden, Romania and the UK, most of whom will be laid off.

The reason given by Vodafone is that “since we bought Wayfinder the business model has changed”, said Vanessa Curran, a spokesperson for Vodafone, referring to the free Google and Nokia navigation services. Vodafone clearly does not want to invest another penny in a market it believes has no future for revenue.

According to IDC, the market research company, vendors shipped a total of 54.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 39.0% from the same quarter a year ago. For the full year, vendors shipped a total of 174.2 million units in 2009, up 15.1% from the 151.4 million units in 2008. Converged mobile devices accounted for 15.4% of all mobile phones shipped in 2009, up slightly from 12.7% in 2008.

These figures are similar to IDC’s competitor Strategy Analytics that acknowledges 173.8 million units in 2009 and 53 million in the fourth quarter alone.

According to a new report from market research firm IDC, Google’s mobile operating system Android will experience the fastest growth of any mobile operating system between 2009 and 2013.

Starting from a small base of 690,000 units in 2008, total Android-powered shipments is said to reach 68 million units by 2013, making for a CAGR of 150.4%.

According to IDC Android will benefit from having a growing footprint of handset vendors supporting it and will finish second to Symbian in shipments by 2013.