Masternaut, the provider of Webraska Navigation, said today its navigation software is pre-installed on the new Palm Treo Pro smartphone in Europe. This new Smartphone (the first GPS-enabled phone from Palm) will be sold by two wireless operators in the Netherlands and in Italy and available unlocked in the rest of Europe.

Webraska navigation is an hybrid turn by turn navigation software which can both work with off-board or on-board map data. The software is provided as a 14 days trial version then sold at 59 Euro with one country map or 79 Euro with pan-European maps for a one year license. The map data is from NAVTEQ and a pan-European speed camera database (AlertesGPS from GPS Prevent) is included within the one year subscription.

Palm is the first handset manufacturer signed up by Webraska which has been so far essentially working with wireless operators. Jean-Michel Durocher, the founder of Webraska, said today to GPS Business News: "handset makers are particularly interested in our hybrid navigation technology which is very convenient for their customers". Other customers from Webraska include Orange France and Great Britain (although a competing solution from Telmap is currently in deployment by Orange in these countries), Bouygues (France), Mobitel (Slovenia), Vodafone Italy, Teleprovodnik (Russia), and in Brazil Vivo and Nextel via a local joint venture, Webraska Do Brazil.

"Webraska currently has over 300,000 activated users," added Jean-Michel Durocher. "We have seen an impressive growth in the last 18 months".

Webraska was bought by Sanef (a French Highway and Telematics operator) in May 2007 and consolidated with another Sanef subsidiary, Masternaut (fleet management), in February 2008.