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MobiMate is now offer a version of WorldMate, an extremely popular application among road warriors (kind of the Swiss Army Knife of mobile travel software) for free to users of smartphones running Windows Mobile Professional/Pocket PC platform. That is all Microsoft-run PDAs and smartphones with touch screens.

As a result of this announcement, WorldMate now supports a number of major smartphone platforms through what it calls its 'Freemium' business model. In fact, MobMate CEO Nadav Gurs said the new Windows Mobile software is the "final piece in the company’s move to a Freemium business model” in a statement.

Here's what the free version of WorldMate delivers:

It includes an itinerary viewer, global weather forecast, world clocks, a clothing size and measurement converter, a world day/night map and a tip and tax calculator.

Upgrading to WorldMate Professional, a paid subscription, adds real-time flight status, flight schedules, packing list, animated satellite weather imagery and global dialing code guide for $6.95 per month or $74.95 a year.

More on WorldMate Freemium
Back in May of 2006, MobiMate inked a deal with a company called Amobee to develop a version of WorldMate not based on the usual subscription model, but rather advertising.

So instead of users paying a monthly or yearly subscription fee for the software, users receive the application for free. That's because WorldMate serves ads through Amobee's Media System technology.

The new free edition of World Mate delivers advertising in the form of "interstitials" shown during idle-time; for instance when the application is first loaded or when data updates occur. These ads enable users to respond immediately to advertisers' messages, by browsing to an advertiser's WAP-site or by placing a call to its service line for example.

Advertisements are served online and are rotated over time, just like banners or interstitials in a Web site.

All-Platform Bestseller
Few if any songs make it onto the pop, R&B, and country charts simultaneously. Yet that is essentially what MobiMate achieved a couple of years ago with Handango, the leading retailer of mobile software.

At the time, Handango announced WorldMate became the first application to be a bestseller for all of the mobile software retailer's supported platforms at the same time. Not only that, it achieved this distinction across multiple categories.

So WorldMate landed in the top ten for Handango's Travel, Business & Professional, and Personal Productivity categories for the Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian UIQ, Symbian Series 60, Blackberry, Nokia Series 80 Communicators, and J2ME environments.