Facebook For Android Finally Has More Daily Active Users Than Facebook For iPhone
For the first time, the Facebook for Android mobile app has eclipsed the daily active user count of Facebook for iPhone. The Android app launched in September 2009 more than a year after its iPhone sister and has been playing catch-up ever since.
Context & Ripple Effects
The crossover closes a two-year arc: Facebook's Android app only landed in September 2009, more than a year after the iPhone version, and has been playing catch-up since — a gap Facebook itself underscored in August 2010 when it corrected its own iPhone user count down to 44 million monthly actives. Android's much larger global device base was always the structural advantage; this is the moment daily engagement caught up with installed base.
The timing matters beyond the milestone: days earlier, on December 15, Facebook pushed Timeline out to Android and m.facebook.com, so its biggest mobile redesign arrived just as Android became its most-engaged mobile platform. The Next Web's same-week pickup of the iPhone app update shows how closely the two stories were read together.
First-order effects
- Facebook for Android becomes the company's highest-engagement mobile client overnight, making Android the default target for mobile product launches and ad inventory decisions.
- Apple's iOS loses its claim as Facebook's core mobile audience, weakening the implicit iOS-first assumption that had governed Facebook's mobile roadmap since 2008.
Second-order effects
- Google gains a marquee proof point that Android's scale converts into daily engagement on top-tier apps — useful ammunition against the perception that Android users engage less than iPhone users.
- Advertisers and measurement partners now have to treat Android reach as primary rather than secondary, pressuring mobile ad pricing and campaign design toward Android-first defaults.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, app engagement rankings will track global handset share rather than US launch platforms, reordering which ecosystems developers treat as their center of gravity.
- Daily active users — not signups or monthly figures — harden as the metric platforms and investors use to judge mobile products, a standard Facebook's own reporting helped establish.
The trend: Global Android handset share is converting into app-engagement leadership, pulling major consumer platforms' roadmaps and ad economics away from an iOS-first default.