A new report by Pyramid Research suggests that the number of mobile social networking users in Europe is expected to increase from 52 million in 2009 to 112 million at the end of this year and eventually to over 450 million by 2014.
For this growth to last throughout the entire forecast period, both mobile operators and SNSs should strengthen their collaboration and bring it to a new level. Social networking sites’ proactive role certainly helped and in that sense Pyramid cites Facebook example which was able to go from only 5 million in January 2008 to an estimated 85 million users in December 2009. 30% of that number represents European users, according to the research company’s estimates.
The report titled “Mobile Operators See Strong Revenue Potential from Social Networking” examines the business model while addressing three possible drivers of uptake: a quality user experience based on the high penetration of 3G and smartphones that we project across Europe; operators’ efforts aimed at increasing mobile social networking uptake; and the efforts of social network providers to promote the value of mobility among their users. Additional details are available from Pyramid Research’s website.