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Facebook Profits Triple As Apple Sales Jump

Facebook Profits Triple As Apple Sales Jump

A surge in advertising sales helped Facebook triple its profits in the first three months of 2014, the social networking site has revealed.

The company posted a Q1 profit of $642m (£380m) on the back of a 72% surge in revenues, driven by mobile advertising.

The amount of money it makes from advertising is up 82% on the same period last year, with mobile ads accounting for about 60% of all sales.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said: "Facebook's business is strong and growing and this quarter was a great start to 2014."

In an apparent nod to the company's $19bn (£11.4bn) acquisition of WhatsApp , he added: "We've made some long term bets on the future while staying focused on executing and improving our core products and business.

"We're in a great position to continue making progress."

Facebook released its figures at almost the same time as Apple, which reported first-quarter sales of $45.6bn (£27.2bn) - up about 5% year-on-year - and a $10.2bn (£6.1bn) profit.

The company's CEO, Tim Cook, promised "new products and services that only Apple could bring to the market".

Much of Facebook's growth is linked to soaring mobile use among its 802 million daily active users.

Its iPhone sales boost was helped by growing access to the world's biggest mobile market, China.

Around eight in every 10 users log in to the site using a mobile device - up more than 40% year-on-year.

Apple said it sold 44 million iPhones between January and March - a rise of 17% on the first three months of 2013.

It shifted 16 million iPads and four million Macs in the same period but iPod sales continued to slump, down more than 50% on the start of last year.