Facebook’s beat its revenue expectations for the fourth quarter, seeing a 40 percent increase to US$1.59 billion as a result of a surge in mobile users.
The social networking company announced its results yesterday, declaring fourth quarter earnings of US$64 million, with mobile revenue doubling and mobile users exceeding desktop ones for the first time.
Mobile comprised 23 percent of advertising revenue, compared with 14 percent in the third quarter. The company’s share price still fell in after-hours trading, however.
Daily active users on mobiles during December hit 680 million out of the 1.06 billion total. PC users stood at 618 million.
“In 2012, we connected over a billion people and became a mobile company,” said chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg said, however, that the shift to mobile “is challenging for us to navigate… We started off the year with apps that weren’t as high-quality as we would have wanted. Today there’s no argument. Facebook is a mobile company.”
He also suggested that the new Graph Search feature could “potentially turn into a meaningful business for us”.
