Social networks to boost LBS market

Social networking applications that take advantage of location information could become a key driver for growing the location-based services market, according to a new report from ABI Research.
The firm predicts the market for fully mobile location-based social networking sites will support more than 82 million subscriptions by 2013. LBS applications also are expected to incorporate fixed social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
ABI said mobile social networking applications unify a large set of location-based services like friend finders, local search and geo-tagging. “While growth will be mainly driven by the availability of multimedia-centric GPS handsets, other mobile form factors will also become important,” said Dominique Bonte, director at ABI Research. “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,” said Bonte. “Nissan Carwings’ in-car telematics solution allows the sharing and ranking of fuel consumption in Japan.”