Application store analytics company Distimo has released a new report focusing on location-based apps across the smartphone markets, looking at the costs and proliferation of GPS and location-based mobile software.

The navigation and maps, news and weather, and social categories feature the strongest with location-based services, with more than half of all such applications being premium software.

The iPhone features the highest number of location-based applications, and has the highest percentage of paid software than either BlackBerry or Android. The latter offers an interesting tangent, with only 79 per cent of location-based applications being free - mostly due to the close association with Google and its free map service.

BlackBerry has seen the highest rise in the cost of location-based software, with its average application cost ($14.37) almost twice that of the iPhone App Store ($7.34). But overall, the report shows a steadily growing interest in location-based services, which is likely to increase further as augmented reality applications catch on.

Click here to view the full report.