ABI Research: 82 million location-based mobile social networking users by 2013
By Dusan Belic on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 10:23 AM PST In Research, Services
According to ABI Research, mobile location-based social networking is expected to become a key driver for the uptake of location-based services as it provides a unifying framework for a large set of applications such as friend finders, local search and geo-tagging. The research company argues that while many LBS applications will include features allowing the sharing of real-time experiences via “fixed” social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, fully-fledged mobile location-based social networking sites will also gain momentum with more than 82 million subscriptions expected by 2013.
Licensing agreements with carriers and handsets manufacturers will be a crucial success factor for location-enabled social sites to reach critical market share, with advertising-based model set to prevail due to the perfect fit with the local search- and content-driven social context. In addition, the emergence of location-enabled IM apps such as Palringo Local and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Chat is also an important trend to watch.
ABI Research director, Dominique Bonte, argues that the growth will be mainly driven by the availability of GPS-enabled handsets. However, he also adds that Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) with built-in GPS receivers, connected PNDs and outdoor GPS will also play an important role. As an example, Dominique points to Nissan Carwings’ in-car telematics solution, which allows the sharing and ranking of fuel consumption in Japan…
More information about ABI’s study “Location-Based Mobile Social Networking” is available from here.
