Facebook sees mobile users to grow more rapidly

Hyderabad: Social networking site Facebook anticipates its mobile users growth to outpace PC users growth in "foreseeable" future largely on the back of India, Brazil and the US.

The networking giant has, however, failed to cash in on the growing mobile user base so far. Facebook, in a filing with Securities and Exchange Commission of the US, said it has 1.01 billion MAUs as on September 30, 2012. Users in Brazil, India, and Japan represented key sources of growth in the third quarter of 2012 relative to the prior year, it said.

"While most of our mobile users also access Facebook through personal computers, we anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile usage will exceed the growth in usage through personal computers for the foreseeable future and that the usage through personal computers may be flat or continue to decline in certain markets, including key developed markets such as the US, in part due to our focus on developing mobile products to encourage mobile usage of Facebook," it said.

Despite the phenomenal growth in MAUs, Facebook failed to encash the situation accordingly.... in the first nine months of 2012, we generated only a small portion of our revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to continue to increase mobile revenues is unproven," it added.

On competition, the networking site said, there is significant competition in almost every aspect of its business from companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, which offer similar kind of products.

"We compete broadly with Google's social networking offerings, including Google+, and also with other, largely regional, social networks that have strong positions in particular countries, including Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut (owned by Google) in Brazil and India, and vKontakte in Russia," Facebook said.

Kirthiga Reddy, Director online operations, Facebook India recently had said that the user base in India has grown to 65 million from a bare eight million two years ago, making it a strong platform for marketers.