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 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.