Within consumer telecommunications, one area of big growth potential is mobile video social networks. We are already seeing a surge of operators move into this space, such a T-Mobile with VidUP, Telestra, and Qualcomm investing in vendors that can enable this.
It seems that mobile carriers are looking to lock in customers and also invite new ones by building out their own private Mobile Social Networks -- if one particular proprietary network can get a lot of viral videos from cellphone users shooting pics on the go, this creates a strong incentive for other people to switch to that carrier just for that "exclusive community".
The companies that become prime investment targets are then companies such as Intercasting Corporation or Pixsense, who offer to be the bridge between social networks and carriers, providing the technology to carriers on-demand.
The next step -- as web social networks such as Facebook and MySpace are currently seeing an epxlosion of -- will be the value-added applications on top of the social networks.
These value-additions could include applications similar to IQZone -- which offers a way to put up classified listings of used items from your mobile phones -- and others which could very well be as advanced as Ebay.
In my view, investments in the next 6 months should either be in technology vendors enabling proprietary social networks in mobile carriers, or otherwise in technology vendors that are creating "value-added application aggregation" platforms that can integrate seamlessly with those networks.