Facebook has opened its first engineering center outside of the U.S., with a focus on mobile. The crucial reason for the move is that the most of Facebook users—nearly 600ml out of one billion of all its users—login to the social media via mobile devices.

Photo: Facebook London center Timeline

The new engineering center is headed by software engineer Philip Su who curates work of 12 Facebook engineers relocated from the U.S., and about eight Londoners. UK Chancellor George Osborne participated in Tuesday’s opening, calling it an important milestone in the government’s push to attract leading technology companies to the UK.

Su said the center will focus on improvements to Facebook’s applications for iOS and Android. The London center will be working to speed up the apps and lower the bandwidth they consume, as well as solve the problem of power management on various mobile devices.

Facebook Vice President of Engineering Mike Schroepfer told Digital Spy: “The reason we are really here hasn’t changed: We want to make great products. What really hurts is when people have a bad experience with our products. When our app was slow and people were giving it two stars that hurt more.”

“ I see us now coming out of end of the tunnel. I am really excited about the products. We have the most advanced infrastructure out there, we are ahead of everyone else in terms of processing an immense amount of data, and we are well-positioned to deliver a more personal experience to our users.»

Photo: Facebook London center opening, from www.digitalspy.co.uk