All about Technology: Nearly a third of Facebook's 1.32 billion users now exclusively mobile

Wednesday 23 July 2014

Nearly a third of Facebook's 1.32 billion users now exclusively mobile

The House of Zuckerberg put on the quarterly dog and pony show for investors Wednesday, and while there's plenty of cash to go around, the real story is how many of Facebook's users are ditching the desktop for greener pastures on mobile devices.

Facebook just announced earnings for the second quarter of 2014, and one thing is clear: The social network is fast becoming a mobile-centric company, with a full 62% of advertising revenue now generated from smartphones and tablets.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's former Harvard University project is now home to 1.32 billion users, with people flocking to the social network at a rate of 14% year over year.

But the real story is just how many of those users are exclusively logging in from mobile devices: 399 million, or roughly a third of the site's total user base, with plenty more apparently on the way as mobile growth increased 31% in the last year.

By the numbers

All of the above translated to bigger quarterly profits for Facebook, with a 61% increase to $2.91 billion (about UK£1.71B, AU$3.08B) in revenue, handily beating Wall Street analyst expectations with earnings of 42 cents per share for the second quarter, which ended June 30.

Facebook also somehow managed to spend less over the last three months, more than doubling quarterly profits to $791 million (about UK£464M, AU$838M), a 138% increase over the same period last year, which eked out a mere $333 million profit (about UK£196M, AU$353M).

Not surprisingly, the majority of Facebook's quarterly revenue ($2.68 billion, about UK£1.57B, AU$2.84B) came from advertising, a 67% increase over last year's June quarter, with a whopping 62% of ad revenue generated from mobile devices.

Facebook executives plan to leverage video-based advertising to help grow future revenue, and expects to keep operating in an aggressive "investment mode" through 2015 on the heels of the recent Oculus Rift and WhatsApp acquisitions.