Facebook had a "strong quarter capping off a really great year," Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in an interview. She called 2014 the year Facebook completed the shift to mobile, and said the company will continue to make investments to build its business this year. When it comes to Facebook's ad business, the focus is directly on mobile. Sandberg said “We expect that growth in mobile users will continue to be the driver of our growth for the foreseeable future and we also expect that usage through personal computers will continue to decline worldwide, including in key markets such as the United States and other developed markets in Europe and Asia.”
The company is still a long way from catching up to rival Google Inc. in the digital advertising market, though. In 2014, Facebook had a nearly 8 percent share of the market compared with Google's 31 percent according to eMarketer. That's an increase for Facebook and a slight decrease for Google from 2013.
Facebook, which owns the popular photo-sharing app Instagram and the messaging service WhatsApp, has launched stand-alone mobile apps of its own, in a move that helps it take up more real estate on people's phones. Besides its Messenger app, though, these apps have seen limited success.