Social networking sites were the driving force behind a majority of the year's successes in mobile internet marketing, according to one expert.

Director of mobile monetisation for Connected Life at Yahoo Europe, Charles Sword said the ability for people to access such applications as Facebook and MySpace while on the move is the galvanising force behind web use.

He stated that a number of companies were sceptical about the success that mobile communities could provide, yet many were changing their attitudes over the course of the year, according to Mobile Europe.

"It's the change in customer behaviour we've seen this year that is really fundamental to the opportunity for mobile advertising going forward," he told the website.

The success of the industry is also down to the technological advancements in the digital platform, Mr Sword continued, with many mobile advertising promotions being one of many areas benefiting from this trend.

ClickZ's Enid Burns said earlier this week that the launch of the Apple iPhone may have been one of the single-most important pieces of technology in the advance of the mobile market.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.