While much of the talk on today’s Facebook second quarter earnings call centered around the company’s positive financial performance, one product was left out of the equation: Facebook Home.
Home, Facebook’s much-touted entry into the smartphone market, seems to have been met with a resounding “meh” from consumers.
The HTC First, which comes pre-loaded with Home, is currently being sold by AT&T for 99 cents with a two year contract, nearly a 100 percent discount off its retail price of $439.99. While AT&T hasn’t released sales data for the First, the massive price drop wouldn’t seem to indicate good news.
While the product itself may be seeing some lackluster performance, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the earnings call’s question-and-answer period that Home is a long-term play, rather than something that’s going to provide a quick return.
“In the case of Home, it’s a new category of product that’s different from anything that exists out there. And I think of it more as a seed that we’re planting that is going to create a completely new pillar of the ecosystem, rather than drafting off of behavior that people already have in the ecosystem today. So, I definitely think that we just have to think of this over the long term, when we’re building models for the company, we basically think that this is something that we’re going to invest in for years, and we expect these to become market leading products, and they’re doing things that no one else really has the strategic position or content to be able to build these products, so we’re excited about them, they’re just going to be longer-term bets.”
Zuckerberg’s forward-thinking statements are nice, but he didn’t address how Home will attract users in the future who aren’t interested in it today. Right now, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s interested.
But folks certainly are shifting to mobile experiences. According to Facebook’s latest results, 41 percent of its ad revenue was derived from mobile during the most recent quarter. That was up from 30 percent in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, its monthly active users on mobile topped 819 million during the quarter.
“We’ve made good progress growing our community, deepening engagement and delivering strong financial results, especially on mobile,” said Zuckerberg in a statement today. “The work we’ve done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future.”
Facebook may be planning on investing in Home for years, but the company will need to see a return on its investment eventually. If the current trend with Home continues, the product may not have much of a future, even if Zuck plans for it to be a pillar of the company’s ecosystem.
Previously on GeekWire: Why I uninstalled Facebook Home in 30 seconds… Facebook earnings beat expectations as Q2 revenue reaches $1.8B
