J’son & Partners, a management consultancy covering telecom and IT markets in Russia and other countries, has released a report on Russia’s small but rapidly-expanding mobile social networks market.
The popularity of mobile social networks is growing in Russia in the same way as elsewhere in the world, the report notes, driven by the increasing penetration of smartphones and mobile Internet use.
Virtually all social networks in Russia have mobile applications or versions, attracting a total audience of 12.5 million monthly users in 2012 – up from 7.05 million in 2011.
But Russia represents a small fraction of the world audience of mobile social networks, according to J’son, which reached 491 million users in 2011.
The consultancy estimates the value of this market at $41.4 million in 2012, forecasting a four-fold increase by 2016 to over $130 million.
J’son defines mobile social networks as including both social mobile apps and mobile browser versions of online social networks. Research for the report took into account classic geosocial networks and thematic social networks as well as blogging and microblogging platforms. Dating, photo hosting and video hosting services, as well as forums, were not included.
Source: ICT Online
