subject: Is It 200 Million Or 500 Million? And Who's Counting Anyway? [print this page] Last Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, held a press conference to announce new functionality in Facebook. He mentioned three new platforms for developers that will help integrate applications and create a more friendly user experience. All three platforms were focused on mobile computing, you know, smartphones such as the iPhone as well as Android and Symbian supported devices. Then he said something that made me stop and think, "There are now over 200 million Facebook users " Wait a minute. I heard earlier in the year there were over 500 million Facebook users. Then he went on to say " on mobile devices." Oh, now I get it. Of the 500 million Facebook users on computers, 200 million of them also use Facebook on their mobile device or smartphone. Is that the whole story?
Well, no. It turns out that many (no number was given) of these smartphone Facebook users only use Facebook on their smartphone. This is a trend I have seen other places as well. I draw an interesting conclusion based on these analyst findings and projections.
* According to figures for Q2, 2010 released by Gartner, Smartphones represented 61.6 million (19%) of the 325.6 million mobile phones sold, a sales increase of over 50% on Q2 2009.
* The Coda Research Consultancy predicts global smartphone sales of some 2.5 billion over the 2010-2015 period, and also suggests that mobile Internet use via smartphones will increase 50 fold by the end of that period.
* Gartner expects over 500 million smartphones to sell in 2012.
* Morgan Stanley Research estimates sales of smartphones will exceed those of PCs in 2012.
I see a trend. As we look out to 2015 and beyond, the smartphone may be the first place people go for Internet content and using social media. While Facebook will continue to grow, perhaps the major growth will be on smartphones and smartphone users of Facebook will be larger than the computer users of Facebook. Now it makes sense why Mark Zuckerberg would focus so much on the smartphone or mobile computing solutions.
This trend would indicate I will be doing more surfing from my smartphone than from my computer. This also means my thumbs will be used more than my fingers. And then there is the awkwardness of trying to type in complicated usernames and passwords clicking the shift and number along with moving between characters, numbers, and special characters. Ugh. Now the punchline Facebook to the rescue! One of the three announcements involved a single login. You login to Facebook and you now have access to your Facebook account and all other accounts. Sort of like a master login.
So, bring it on. Bye-bye computer, Hello smartphone!
