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Facebook Home downloaded 500,000 times in 10 days

Will future updates to Facebook Home slow down the one star reviews it's currently getting?
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer

It's been just over a week since Facebook released Facebook Home on Google Play, and the app has already been downloaded over 500,000 times.

The app's move into the 500,000 to one million download category was first noticed on Sunday by mobile analyst Benedict Evans.

The downloads represent only a fraction of Facebook's estimated one billion users and are still far behind the Google Play download figures for the standard Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook-owned Instagram, which have all reached between 100 million and 500 million downloads.

Given Facebook Home's limited support for select, popular devices, it's hard to say whether the number of downloads is good or poor. However, the app is currently receiving a lot of one out of five star reviews from users. At present, one star reviews for Home dominate, whereas five stars is the most common review on Google Play for the Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps.

Still, Home gives Facebook another way to improve its penetration on Android as its mobile app user base edges towards half of the company's total.

Earlier this year, Evans noted that in Q3 2012, Facebook had 470 million mobile app users, up from 240 million a year earlier. However, while Facebook's app achieved about 70 percent penetration of the iOS user base, it only reached 40 percent of the Android user base. Meanwhile, users accessing Facebook through the mobile web was flat.

Facebook’s Messenger also appears to have grown quickly in the past six months, with Evans noting that the app had 53 million app users on iOS and Android, with around 30 million coming from Android. According to Google Play stats, Messenger on Android alone has now been downloaded over 100 million.

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