The first and second quarters of 2012 have been kind to Facebook in terms of mobile device user growth. The world’s largest social network announced on Thursday that it added 110 million mobile users in just six months. The mobile platform growth for the last quarter included 55 million users in the quarter ended June 30.
Facebook can now claim that more than 50% of its 900+ million worldwide users are now operating their accounts via tablets and smartphones.
According to Facebook 543 million users access the network on mobile devices. Facebook has now experienced four straight quarters of increased mobile user acquisition.
According to Electronista :
“Since the second quarter of 2010, the social network has been adding an average of 48.5 million mobile users per quarter. As a percentage of total users, mobile users have grown from 32.2 percent of Facebook’s user base in 2010 to 56.9 percent today. Due to overlap with users that also access the site from a traditional computer, as well as irregularities introduced by apps that automatically check in with the site, it is difficult to determine just how many of Facebook’s users are now solely mobile-based.”
Facebook has fought to retain its stock value over concerns that the social network is not doing enough to capitalize on mobile device revenues, an increase in monthly users however could provide an uptick in mobile revenue.
Facebook’s next goal is a redesign its mobile app from the bottom up to focus on core mobile programming technology instead of HTML5, the new web protocol that is currently causing the Facebook Mobile app to operate very slowly on mobile devices.
