Location-Based Mobile Social Networking To Hit 82 Million Subscriptions By 2013

Nov 13, 2008 12:59 PM, MD&D News Staff

Two trends will converge to yield a huge new market, as ABI Research predicts 82 million location-based mobile social networking subscriptions by 2013. These technologies will provide a unifying framework for a large set of applications, such as friend finders, local search, and geo-tagging, allowing users to share real-time experiences via their favorite social networking sites.

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“While growth will be mainly driven by the availability of multimedia-centric GPS handsets, other mobile form factors will also become important. Mobile Internet devices (MIDs) with built-in GPS receivers have been announced, with location-based social networking site GyPSii supporting Moblin-based Intel Atom processor-powered MIDs,” says Dominique Bonte, ABI Research director.

“Connected personal networking devices (PNDs) and outdoor GPS solutions are other obvious candidates for location-based networking. Nissan Carwings’ in-car telematics solution allows the sharing and ranking of fuel consumption in Japan,” Bonte adds. Also, location-enabled instant messaging will emerge thanks to applications like Palringo Local and Nokia Chat, providing location-based context.

However, location-enabled social sites will depend on licensing agreements with carriers and handset manufacturers to reach critical market share. There will be a wide range of business models at first, though advertising-based models ultimately will prevail due to their perfect fit with local search- and content-driven social context.