Saturday, August 1, 2015

Why Mobile Internet Matters for Google and Facebook

There is a very simple reason why Facebook and Google are so intent on spending their own money to stimulate Internet adoption everywhere. More users means more revenue.

There also is a reason why mobile Internet access is so important to both firms: most of the new users will access the Internet on mobile devices.


During the second quarter of 2015, Facebook worldwide average revenue per user was $2.76, an increase of 23 percent from the second quarter of 2014.


Over this period, ARPU increased by 44 percent in United States and Canada, 19 percent in Asia-Pacific, 18 percent in Europe, and five percent in the rest of the world.


Google, on the other hand, is the 800 pound gorilla in the market, earning about $45 in ARPU  in the first quarter of 2014, for example, compared to Facebook’s $7.20 and Twitter’s $3.50 ARPU in the first quarter of 2014, other analyses suggest.


But those figures also explain why Facebook and Google have spent so much time and money to boost Internet usage globally. More people connected to the Internet means more revenue.




It has been said that Facebook is an app intended for use by mobile users. That might not have been quite so true at first, but is stunningly accurate now. In June 2015 Facebook had 963 million daily active users.


In the same month, Facebook had 844 million mobile active users, or about 88 percent of the volume of all active users.


Facebook had 655 million mobile-only monthly active users as of June 30, 2015, increasing 64 percent from 399 million mobile-only MAUs during the same period in 2014.


The remaining 659 million mobile MAUs accessed Facebook from both mobile devices and personal computers during June 2015.


Facebook says “we anticipate that growth in mobile users will continue to be the driver of our user growth for the foreseeable future.”





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