Originally Posted by Convergent

Actually, there may be some legal reason why they use the term rental. I know that there is a distinct difference between renting software, buying a license for software, etc. If you go back about 25 years, the only option that existed was to rent software. No one sold it. Today when you buy it, you aren't really buying it... you are buying a license, which is legally different. Who knows if there is a valid reason behind it or not, but they can call it whatever they want if it works. This link talks about the topic a bit... Small Business Software; Renting Software as a Service for Small Businesses . In the case of TeleNav, you are actually installing and running software on your device, but it can't really do anything without the software and data on the server.