A new report from ABI Research calculates that the number of people accessing social networks from mobile phones will exceed 550 million this year.

By the end of 2016 the figure will treble to over 1.7 billion users worldwide, which means over two-thirds of all social network users will be using mobiles to access the services.

Mark Bridge writes:

Today's news summary is a little early because I'm on holiday this afternoon. I'll be leaving Iain and James in charge... and, even though it's traditionally the "silly season", they'll have plenty to talk about in Wednesday's podcast.

A week ago, the big news in our podcast was Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility. This week it was HP's move away from webOS devices. And now we hear that Steve Jobs has stepped down from the CEO role at Apple, although he's remaining with the company as Chairman of the Board.

Facebook is making a number of changes to its service, with improvements to its privacy controls.

It's also phasing out the 'Places' feature, which was available to mobile phone users, and will now allow users to 'check in' by adding location to anything - including status updates, photos and Wall posts.

Sony Ericsson has announced a new Android smartphone called 'Live with Walkman'.

The Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman features a dedicated Walkman button that provides instant access to the music player. There's also Facebook integration that allows consumers to 'like' and share tunes, plus there's Sony's Qriocity service offering access to millions of songs and thousands of movies.

Facebook has launched a standalone mobile Messenger application for iPhone and Android devices.

It's based on the Facebook Messages service that was launched late last year.