At the moment there are more than 3.3 billion mobile phone users worldwide it makes 50% of total population, compared to 20% of internet’s. That is why experts are predicting great changes in mobile social networks’ field. According to Pyramid Research’s “Social Networking Goes Mobile” report the number of consumers worldwide using their mobile phones to access social networks will more than triple from 2010 to 2012.
As we can see from the graph below 1/3 of UK’s mobile phone users are using the device to read their e-mails. We can roughly say that most of them are business users. On the other hand 1/4 are using phones for social networking already now. These are mostly young people and it is predicted that the number will increase as well.
The demand for these services, isn’t necessarily universal, it is strong among some specific geographic and demographic groups. For example in US AT&T continues to offer a paid version of MySpace Mobile, while MySpace itself offers a free mobile version of the site and AT&T has plenty of customers for that service. Nearly 500 social network-using respondents said for the study that mobile phones were their main means of daily communication. That would appear to make social networking by mobile phone a sure hit for US teens. Teen interest in Facebooking or MySpacing by phone will likely grow through , e-marketer has given their predictions on the graph below.
