Facebook recently claimed 750 million users. Benedict Evans reports on his blog that by looking at the official Pages for various Facebook Apps, you can (by counting the number of monthly active users and doing some quick math) determine the percentages of users on various devices. For instance, if you look at the Facebook for iPhone Page, you will see there is over 86 million active users, which accounts for 11 percent of 750 million Facebook users.
Taking it a step further, put that same number of iPhone users agains the 250 million Facebookers using mobile devices, and if you are smart at math (show your work, please), you see that iPhone grabs 34 percent of the Facebook mobile user market. Android is right behind, with about 76 million Facebook App users and 30 percent of the Facebook mobile user market.
But, you ask, what about iPad?
Well, since there is no Facebook App for iPad (cough, cough), the users of independent iPad apps for Facebook were combined, and that comes out to a few million, total, or about three percent of all mobile Facebook users, and one percent of all Facebook users overall. Which is ugly, and clearly independent Facebooks apps made for the iPad are not being used as much as the offical Facebook Apps made for other mobile devices.
Evans admits that the data is squirrelly, in that it is extremely difficult to cull out duplicates (users who access both on their iPhone as well as on their iPad), and that there is no way to verify the "conveniently round" 250 million mobile users Facebook claims.
One conclusion we can make, however, is that a Facebook App for iPad would be nice right about now. Or, actually, it would have been nice right about sixteen months ago. But now would be fine, too.
Via Benedict Evans
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