Mobile operators must make the most of mobile social networking by offering innovative devices, tariffs and services. That’s the message from Pyramid Research, which has just published a report called The Peril and Promise of Mobile Social Networks for Operators. It says communications patterns and mobile devices are both being influenced by social networking.
More than 40% of Facebook users worldwide currently access the site through mobile devices. That’s almost 300 million people using Facebook on their mobiles.
Jan ten Sythoff, Pyramid Research analyst at large, said “Social networks have provided mobile operators with additional revenues, driving new users to adopt mobile internet access and existing users to increase their data usage. Non-messaging data revenues are the fastest revenue growth segment for mobile operators, with a 2010-2016 CAGR of almost 15%, compared with around 4% for messaging and -3% for voice.”
He warns mobile networks that Facebook’s recent move into email means the social network could become a hub for messaging.
Mr Sythoff said “It also has the potential to become the central contact center, possibly adding voice and video communication. This threatens operators both directly, by impacting their voice and messaging revenues, and indirectly because their brands are overshadowed by social networking brands. Operators therefore need to strike a delicate balance between leveraging the demand for social network mobile access and the threat of social networking cannibalizing their basic suite of services.”