Revealing Facebook Mobile User data: Android growth Ultra iphone

News and technology information Beijing time January 5, the U.S. market research company Enders Analysis analyst Niddict Evans (Benedict Evans) published in Wednesday, said that as of November 2012, Facebook Android native apps are 192 million, iphone 147 million and ipad 48 million.

Facebook has been secretive about the user data for mobile apps, but Evans has found a way to crack the data to help outsiders understand the direction and performance of Facebook's mobile business. Most interestingly, Facebook's Android users are growing much faster than iphone users, but the application has a low penetration rate in Android devices.

A year ago, Facebook stopped publishing official mobile app user data through the graph API. But Evans found a way to crack the data, but it eventually failed in November 2012. But because of the overlap between native apps and HTML5 site users, he calculates that Facebook mobile site users are inaccurate. While Facebook declined to comment, credible data sources and official data suggest that his other analyses are accurate.

The following are the main findings of Evans:

iOS and Android

As of September 2011, Facebook's Android monthly active users were 66 million, iphone 91 million, and in December, when Facebook stopped publishing user data, Android had overtaken iOS. 11 months later, in November 2012, Android monthly subscribers reached 192.8 million and the iphone was 147.2 million.

This suggests that Android has become a major source of growth for Facebook's mobile users, which have reached 604 million by the end of the third quarter of 2012. This underscores the need for Facebook to speed up the pace of Android development. Many of Facebook's new features and new apps were first launched on the iphone, perhaps because the company has long defaulted on the iphone for its employees, and the iphone users are indeed higher than the Android users.

Although Facebook has a higher absolute number of Android users than iphone users, the penetration rate is much higher in the iphone user base. Around 200 million iphone users worldwide, 73.6% of which are active users of Facebook's native apps. Only 35% of Android's 550 million users were monthly active users of Facebook's native apps. This may be because Android is more popular in China, and Facebook has not yet entered the Chinese market. It could also be due to a lack of penetration in the more pervasive market of Android, such as Facebook, in India.

But the figures do not count the ipad. The monthly active user of the Facebook ipad has grown steadily from millions of in September 2011 to 48 million in September 2012. If the 100 million ipad user calculates, Facebook's penetration rate is 48%. It's lower than the iphone, but it's also very impressive.

At the same time, of the 195.2 million iOS devices that routinely use Facebook's native apps, only 53.8 million (27.5%) have the iOS 6 built-in Facebook feature enabled. In other words, many users do not use the Address book synchronization, one-click Sharing, one-click login and other functions. Facebook may also need to find ways to persuade more users to start this integration function, not just to benefit them, but also to convince Apple that Facebook is a strong partner.

The platform war between iOS and Android shows that Facebook needs to focus more on the Android platform. If Facebook's iOS and Android apps continue to maintain their current growth trajectory, Android's current monthly active users may have surpassed the combined iphone and ipad apps. Even though Android is not the company's preferred mobile operating system for its employees, developing applications for the system still plays a vital role in increasing overall mobile users.

The potential of mobile phones is huge, RIM, Nokia and Windows users are less

From September 2011 to November 2012, Facebook for Every phone mobile apps, based on Microdevices, doubled the number of active users, reaching 82 million. The growth of this feature mobile app shows that emerging markets around the world are embracing mobile devices and that a large number of users are using Facebook.

Facebook has not revealed much about the app, perhaps because most of its employees are using smartphones, so it's hard to see the importance of the product and not put too much effort into it. But Facebook still needs to innovate in the area before Low-cost smartphones start replacing feature handsets in developing countries.

Facebook doesn't have to worry too much about the second-tier smartphone platform. As of November 2012, Facebook had 60.2 million BlackBerry users, but only a slight increase from 4890 in December 2011. By November 2012, Facebook, a failed book tablet, had only 690,000 active users.

Meanwhile, Nokia's November 2012-month active subscribers were 15.7 million, with only millions of Facebook users on Windows phone platform. For Facebook, it's hard to get enough efficiency for these platforms to diversify their engineering resources.

Messenger apps grow fast but still lag far behind

Facebook has a lot of business and provides a huge amount of functionality, but it's too cumbersome to integrate into a single mobile application. As a result, the company began to launch its own applications in August 2011. This makes it easy for users to quickly start a dedicated interface for popular features, and helps Facebook test new features and eventually add them to the main application.

After acquiring beluga and SMS replacement apps in March 2011, Facebook began to overhaul it and integrate it with the company's network/Mobile information platform. Eventually, the company launched the iOS and Android version of Facebook Messenger apps in August 2011.

1 months later, the application month active users reached 3 million. In the fall of 2011 the growth rate accelerated, by November, each platform's users have reached 10 million. The app is still growing steadily, and Android overtook iOS in the fall of 2012. By the end of November 2012, iOS version of the Messenger application month active users of 22.8 million, Android for 32.3 million, BlackBerry for 1.6 million, total active users reached 56.7 million.

Although this figure has been surprising, Messenger still lags behind several other global instant messaging applications. WhatsApp already has hundreds of millions of users, and Tencent micro-mail last September's users also reached 200 million. That is why Facebook is rumoured to be planning to buy WhatsApp and Snapchat. After the acquisition of the latter, the company eventually launched a poke called the cottage application. Owning a private information platform is crucial to Facebook, as it helps the company to better analyze what users like and is expected to start more revenue-generating programs.

Camera can't compete with Instagram

Facebook knows that it has to launch some unique services in the mobile photo field. So long before the takeover talks with Instagram, the company began developing Facebook Camer apps.

Instagram's deal was quickly finalised, and camera was almost developed, and an independent application was launched in May 2012.

Although camera also offers a lot of filters, powerful bulk uploads and more flexible features, the Instagram is more robust and more loyal to users. By September 2012, Instagram's users had broken 100 million.

Thanks to Evans data, for the first time now we have been able to understand the development of camera. After one months of publication, the app's monthly active user reached 1.4 million, but today it grew to 1.5 million 6 months later. This does not mean that the app is worthless to Facebook, its smooth photo selection, filter and bulk upload features are popular, so Facebook can add these features to the main application. But Facebook would be better off putting more resources into the Instagram platform.

Facebook mobile future?

In short, Facebook's future mobile strategy should focus on Android, enhance the spread of functional mobile apps, and balance the relationship between host applications and independent applications. There is a clear potential for commercialization, but this is another issue.

Android's growth momentum means Facebook should develop better apps for the platform. Facebook's competition with Google could lead to a tangle of plans, but the company needs to stick to its strategy of building an all-inclusive social layer. It should see the development of good Android apps as a way to leverage Google's vast user base and not to consider other issues.

Functional mobile phone users are very large, but there are not many Facebook users. The company should find ways to attract such users. It may also need to be supplemented by some incentive items, such as mobile data discounts.

Finally, with applications such as Messenger, Camera, Poke, and Pages Manager, Facebook's standalone application began to swell. Users may not want their mobile screens to be full of Facebook apps, which could cause them to put these apps into a unified folder. In addition, Google has been successful with a series of independent mobile applications. If 2012 years of Facebook are directions in the Mobile world, then 2013 years from now, the strategy may have to be deployed in a targeted way.