Facebook Home, tops 500k downloads in a week
23 Apr 2013
A little over a week into its release, Facebook's Home Android launcher has topped half a million downloads on the Google Play store, according to technology and devices commentator Benedict Evans, who noted the milestone on Twitter.
Though Facebook has not yet revealed the number of downloads officially, the app has moved into Google Play's ''500,000 to one million'' downloads category, according to Evans.
The milestone notwithstanding, Facebook Home has captured only a tiny bit of Facebook's Android user base, considering the main Facebook app was estimated to have been downloaded between 100 million and 500 million times from Google Play.
Analysts say, the tardy pace of acceptance of the launcher may have a lot to do with the limited number of supported devices. Facebook Home is limited only to a small of number of devices, including the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S3, and Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
It would be available for the Samsung Galaxy S4 with smartphone's release released later this week. HTC First, which would be the first handset to be bundled with the software, would be released this summer.
However, in what should come as a disappointment for Facebook, the bad news extended beyond the low number of Facebook Home installs. The app had a poor two-star rating, based on over 11,000 reviews, with it getting a one star from the majority of reviewers. As against this Facebook Messenger, had four-and-a-half stars, based on nearly 700,000 user ratings.
According to some experts the app was not so much an app as a user interface for the phone, putting Facebook right in the centre of Android users' smartphone experience. With Facebook Home, users can post status updates and view the newsfeed straight from the lock screen, as also conduct messaging without interruption thanks to Chat Heads.
Essentially, it was Facebook's push past being an app like every other app and being a central force of the smartphone, a launch pad.
According to experts Instagram clocked over 1 million downloads in a day when it launched on Android. It then went on to hit over 5 million downloads in six days.
Also given the fact that Facebook had over a billion users, 500, 000 downloads was not much, they say.