Facebook is still an important platform, says CEO Jens Begemann, but 2013 "will be the year where, at least for us, [when] mobile will be significantly bigger than Canvas."
Facebook is still an important platform, says CEO Jens Begemann, but 2013 "will be the year where, at least for us, [when] mobile will be significantly bigger than Canvas," and he's reorganized the company toward that. In a new interview included as part of an extensive feature on the transition of Facebook developers to mobile platforms, Begemann tells Gamasutra that "now, we have roughly 60 percent of our employees working on mobile, 40 percent on Canvas." "We made this decision a year ago," he says. "A year ago we only had 10 people working on mobile. Now it's over half of the 250-people company." While he still thinks the platform is relevant and will continue to stay so, its days are numbered, and he's preparing for that. "We still see growth on Canvas and obviously it's still bigger, but the growth on mobile is extremely fast," says Begemann. "The PC will become less important, and with that the browser, and with that Canvas. But that's really mid-term." He's preparing for a future where people stop buying computers, he says, and do most of their personal playing on tablets. "I think that people who are buying a tablet now, as a private person, won't replace their laptop. They will phase out their existing laptop and they will maybe upgrade in two years to the next generations of tablets," says Begemann. "I think that's what's happening." The full feature, which also contains insights from Clash of Clans team Supercell, Wizard of Oz developers Spooky Cool Labs, and Facebook number-two developer King.com, is live now on Gamasutra.
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