Mobility the Driving Force Behind Facebook Success

Facebook (FB) recorded record profits for its second quarter and solution providers should take notice, because it reinforces not only the tremendous growth of social media but, more specifically, the important role mobility is playing among tech users.

Facebook reported second-quarter revenue of $2.9 billion, an increase of 61 percent from $1.8 billion a year ago. Total advertising revenue was nearly $2.7 billion, a 67 percent increase. Its earnings per share increased 121 percent to 42 cents, up from 19 cents a year earlier.

Wall Street expected a strong showing but these results were way beyond their expectations. Most analysts had expected Facebook’s revenue to come in at $2.8 billion, which would have been 55 percent higher than a year ago. They also anticipated its earnings per share to be 32 cents, which would have been a 68 percent jump.

Now if this isn’t enough to make any company envious, Facebook’s mobile advertising grew 151 percent to represent 62 percent of overall advertising revenue. That’s right almost two-thirds of Facebook’s advertising revenue is coming from mobile devices.

Here is where solution providers need to pay attention. It is absolutely essential for today’s solution providers to offer mobile solutions to their customers. That is where the growth is. More applications are being developed for mobile devices than you can count and users are growing in numbers and sophistication. Businesses are changing their IT infrastructure around mobile device access and management, and solution providers should be at the heart of this transformation.

Over the past year, Facebook has made tremendous strides in making it easier for mobile users to leverage its platform and for advertisers to reach these mobile users and it is working. Case in point is its photo-sharing service Instagram, which Facebook began selling last November. It also launched a mobile advertising network in April, allowing the company to sell ads that appear on mobile apps that it doesn’t even own.

As a result of these and other moves, Facebook’s share of the $18 billion U.S. mobile advertising market is expected to rise to more than 18 percent this year, more than double its share from two years ago.

Facebook is the latest proof that the tech consumer is quickly becoming the mobile consumer. Solution providers need to address this market immediately.

Knock ’em alive!