Facebook Is Making Billions Off Its Smartphone Users

The company also reported steady, if not spectacular, user growth – it now has 1.59 billion monthly active users, up 14 percent from the same time in 2014.

Total revenue rose to $5.84bn from $3.85bn a year earlier, with ad revenue increasing 56.8% to $5.64bn in the holiday shopping period, when spending on advertising typically spikes.

Zuckerberg need not have anxious, if he did anyway, because Facebook’s stock jumped almost 5% on Wednesday hours after trading following the release of the revenue figures. This was in sharp contrast to the same quarter of 2014, when mobile ad revenue accounted for just 69% of Facebook’s revenue.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has surpassed Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison to become world’s sixth richest person after-hours trading on Wednesday.

It has 1.04 billion daily active users (DAUs) while mobile DAUs were 934 million on average for December 2015.

Facebook also reported full-year earnings. “With more people second-screening on Facebook while watching sport, the announcement of Sports Stadium is the natural next step to monetise this huge potential”, de Kermel said.

Facebook is competing with the largest technology companies in the world, holding itself at a more than $200 billion market cap.

In January, Facebook also began taking orders for a consumer version of the Oculus Rift, a head-mounted virtual reality unit.

“If you’re an advertiser and you want to reach mass scale, you only have two options: Facebook and Google”, said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt and Co.

As the engines of commerce keep turning at Facebook, the firm’s executives and analysts are focusing more on how the company’s other bets are working. Of those, 1.44 billion used the service on mobile devices, an increase of 21 per cent.

“Certainly economic uncertainty in the broad macroeconomic environment affects all businesses, it affects our clients, it affects us, but that said we think we’re really well positioned to continue to take advantage of and double down on the shift to mobile which is happening”, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said.

Earlier in 2015, Facebook spent its money as quickly as it earned it – sometimes even faster.

“Everything we hear from agencies and marketers is positive”, said eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. Its income from operations in 2015 came in at Dollars 6.23 billion.