Facebook and Apple Results Show How Much Tech Changes

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 10:11AM EST · Published Apr 28, 6:51AM EDT

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Facebook and Apple Results Show How Much Tech Changes — © courtesy of Facebook Inc.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) posted quarterly numbers that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, and Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) numbers where a disappointment. The changing of the guard at the top of the tech world is not in its middle stages. It already has happened.

Facebook’s monthly active users have hit 1.65 billion. That is 23% of the world’s population. And the growth of that number has slowed, but not enough to keep it from reaching 2 billion within three or four years.

Facebook’s revenue rose 53% in the past quarter to $5.2 billion, a fraction of Apple’s. However, Apple is shrinking, and Facebook is not the only huge global social medium. Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) has 310 million active monthly users. LinkedIn Corp. (NASDAQ: LNKD) and Pinterest have counts over 100 million.
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No question that smartphones have become the dominant consumer electronics device, but what do people use those devices for? Aside from Google search and games, Facebook and other social networks dominate smartphone use. Smartphones have become platforms. Use of social networks and search are at the heart of smartphone demand, even when based on popular downloads at the iTunes store.

Smartphone sales have slowed worldwide. But sales will be in the hundreds of millions each year. Each one sold is another chance for Facebook to get a new member, or to move one from personal computers to portable devices.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.