Facebook claims on its statistics page that 250 million people interact with the platform through mobile devices. Without taking crossover usage into account (using Facebook on both an iPad and an iPhone, for instance), that is roughly a third of the overall user base of Facebook. Researcher Benedict Evans was curious about how Facebook mobile usage breaks down by platform and came away with some intriguing numbers.
With a little simple math, Evans was able to figure that about 222 million people use Facebook through mobile applications such as Facebook for iPhone/Android/Blackberry etc. That is not far from Facebook’s own 250 million designation and does not take into account the amount of people who access Facebook through the mobile Web. There are 86 million users that interact with Facebook through their iPhone while about 76 million do so through Android. Outside of a desktop browser, what is your preferred method of Facebook interaction?
Evans’ numbers come from the Facebook application pages of each platform. For instance, see Facebook for iPhone. It is also important to note that Facebook lists these numbers by monthly active users (MAU), which is the de facto standard for social media metrics. There are also third-party apps to consider including those created by original equipment manufacturers. Evans predicts that Facebook has half as many third-party app users as those that use the official application.
Evans’ Android numbers are not as cut-and-paste as they seem, as nothing Android does ever really is, due to fragmenting issues. Various OEMs bake their own Facebook (and Twitter) functionality into phones, such as Motorola does with Motoblur and HTC does with its Sense skin. Facebook for Android has around 54 million users according to its Facebook application page meaning that OEMs constitute about 22 million of Android’s slice, which would make sense considering the breadth of the Android ecosystem and the near necessity of Facebook integration on mobile devices.
Facebook for BlackBerry has 39.5 million MAUs. That fits with its declining market share and the fact that many enterprises and government agencies block the Facebook for BlackBerry app as the potential for spear phishing and malware coming through the BlackBerry into the BlackBerry Enterprise Server ecosystem is high.
Facebook for Every Phone, the company’s initiative to bring Facebook to the entire world through the any phone that has a data connection, has gained in traction with about 10.3 million users worldwide. That outpaces Nokia’s Ovi application that has 5.6 million MAUs, according to Evans. Nokia’s numbers may be deceiving as certain Nokia phones have their own dedicated Facebook apps.
Checking on Evans’ numbers, they seem to be fairly accurate though it is difficult to tell how many users are accessing Facebook through its mobile site either on phones or tablets.
Graphs Source: Benedict Evans
