TMCnews Featured Article
April 10, 2013
Facebook Home - What will it Do for Mobile VoIP?
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
The mobile market has been heating up for quite some time as more and more consumers and professionals are hitting the road and taking their devices with them. This means all calls; entertainment; messages and social media interactions are being had and managed through one device. Does one application take precedence over others? If Facebook (News - Alert) has its way – it will.
With the recent announcement of Facebook Home, the social media giant is the first thing users will see when they use their Android (News - Alert) phones.
This may be Facebook’s strategy to overcome the fact that it doesn’t have an operating system, yet still needs a better way to connect with mobile users. This poses a risk for telecom operators as Facebook will be the dominate brand on the device and in could even give a boost to the use of mobile VoIP, which has long been a threat for major carriers.
According to Ovum (News - Alert), social messaging cannibalization revenues will grow from $32.6 billion in 2013 to over $86 billion by 2020. If Facebook serves as the default communication platform for telephony, E-Mail and messaging, it could easily increase app engagement six-fold. The giant recently launched a mobile VoIP feature to complement its Facebook IM capability.
Facebook currently leads in the mobile space with 50 percent penetration of the smartphone market and 96 percent of market share overall. Messaging features offered by Facebook are used by 14 percent of smartphone users and total IP messaging on smartphones is at 34 percent. Applications such as WhatsApp and Skype (News
- Alert) are leading the market, but Facebook is knocking on the door with a 42 percent share.
Will this new launch solve the Facebook fatigue problem? Analysts don’t think it will, but it is a valuable move for Facebook as it creates a Facebook-centric experience for all users. It gives Facebook a broader platform, allows the social media giant to track user behavior while mobile and creates additional opportunities for presenting advertisements.
The limited screen space on the mobile device was the biggest challenge Facebook didn’t take into account with its IPO, according to this Montreal Gazette piece. Mobile users were launching Facebook, but they weren’t receiving ads. Great for users – bad for revenue generation.
It is surprising that Google (News
- Alert) would get out of Facebook’s way and allow for such displacement in the mobile market, however. Sure, Google promotes Open Source and that’s exactly how Facebook was able to manipulate its presence on Android phones, but is this a victory or an invitation for Google to do something better? The battle may wage between Google and Facebook as iOS will be off limits to both.
While the blogger world seems excited at this Facebook move, will mobile users embrace this opportunity? Enabling mobile VoIP sure has its perks, but Google already offered this functionality - even if it is clunky to use. Or will operators develop their own strategy to combat the Facebook takeover of the mobile experience?
Edited by Stefania Viscusi