Subscriptions to location-based mobile social networking sites will total 82 million by 2013, according to a report.
ABI Research says the growth in mobile location-based social networking will be a key driver for the uptake of location-based services.
It will provide 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.
Dominique Bonte, ABI Research director, said that while growth will be mainly driven by the availability of multimedia-centric GPS handsets, other mobile form factors will also become important.
“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," he said.
"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.”
The ABI Research report said that licensing agreements with carriers and handsets manufacturers will be a crucial success factor for location-enabled social sites to reach critical market share.
It states that 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.