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. 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.
"While growth will be mainly driven by the availability of multimedia-centric GPS handsets, other mobile form factors will also become important", says ABI Research director Dominique Bonte. "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. Connected 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."
Licensing agreements with carriers and handsets manufacturers will be a crucial success factor for location-enabled social sites to reach critical market share. While initially a wide range of business models will coexist, ultimately advertising-based models will prevail due to the perfect fit with the local search- and content-driven social context.
Another important trend is the emergence of location-enabled instant messaging with applications such as Palringo Local and Nokia Chat enriching mobile communication with location context.
ABI Research's study Location-Based Mobile Social Networking offers insight into trends, social networking features, drivers, barriers and includes detailed descriptions of solutions and market players, with special focus on business models. It also provides recommendations to all major players and shipment and revenue forecasts per region and per location-based social networking type. It forms part of the Location Aware Services, Consumer Mobility and Mobile Content Research Services.
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