A new report from telecoms analyst Ovum says mobile operators are in danger of underestimating the threat that Facebook poses.

Mobile Social Networking: change driver & key players states that operators tend to view Facebook as a non-competitive presence to partner with. However, it suggests that Facebook’s ambitions spread much wider than simply being a social network.

Digital security company Gemalto has announced a new service called Facebook for SIM. It embeds Facebook in a SIM card, enabling mobile network operators to offer the service to customers without a data connection.

Participating networks can offer the service free for a trial period before introducing a flat-rate subscription charge.

HTC has revealed a number of new products at Mobile World Congress, including two Facebook-focussed handsets. The Android-powered HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa both feature a dedicated Facebook button for one-touch access to key functions of the Facebook service.

Also expected in Q2 of 2011 is the HTC Flyer tablet. It’s a 7-inch device with a 1.5GHz processor and an aluminium body.

INQ Mobile, which has Hutchison Whampoa as its parent company, says it plans to have two Android-powered ‘Facebook phones’ on the market later this year.

The INQ Cloud Touch is an Android 2.2 device running a 600MHz Qualcomm chip and a 3.5-inch HGVA screen, while the INQ Cloud Q has a 2.6-inch screen and a QWERTY keyboard. The phones are the first mobiles to use the Facebook social graph API.

Bluestreak Technology, a Canadian company that provides technology for delivering multimedia to various consumer devices, has listed the top 5 most important technology trends it expects to hear about at Mobile World Congress 2011.

2010 was a year of tremendous change in the technology industry...