If there was one trend to emerge from the geekfest that is South-by-Southwest interactive this year, it’s that mobile location services are heating up. Though nobody’s quite sure why people are all telling the world where they are, it sure is getting popular.

Case in point: Patently Apple have discovered that Apple is working on their own location-based service called ‘iGroups’.The service looks like it’s being developed to work on the iPhone (obvs) and in conjunction with MobileMe.

Unlike Foursquare and Gowalla – which are primarily urban discovery games –  iGroups looks to have a slightly more business-y vibe, using high-level encryption to secure communications between people looking to stay in touch at corporate events – which also makes it perfect for the spys looking to co-ordinate attacks (or something).

Also described in the patent is a ‘rock concert’ scenario, where users exchange ‘tokens’ between trusted partners which are then uploaded to a central server. Whether tokens are messages – thus making it like a private Twitter – or something else remains to be seen.

Source: Patently Apple