REUTERS — Sep 5 — Juniper Research expects annual revenues from wireless social networking to increase from $260 million to $3.9 billion by 2012. Top cellphone maker Nokia is betting on that. In July, the company bought Twango – a service that allows users to share photos, videos, and audio files – and now plans to build this social networking technology into the underlying layer of its S60 software.
Mark Brooks: As carriers suffer from commoditization, the phone and software companies will be in stronger positions. Apple (iphone), RIM (blackberry) and Nokia (N95), etc, need to strengthen their mobile SNS and dating, along with gaming and content (music and videos) offerings and build new revenue streams that the carriers can take a cut of. A small cut preferably, but that depends on just how fast the phone and software companies move.