As we had enunciated in our articles from time to time that the focus of the global economy is undergoing a paradigm shift from the developed western economy towards the developing Asian nations and in particular the diverse Indian subcontinent, Facebook’s (FB, Financial) numbers has yet again proved us right in our speculations.
With the rather volatile European economy and the U.S. economy already brimming the next area of expansion for all business lies in China and India, the two Asian nations housing the largest and the second largest population of the world respectively. Due to an impending slowdown in the Chinese economy and a lot of business restrictions in China, India automatically becomes the hot spot of business forays for the major global giants. The number mix of Facebook has now proved the point once again. Let us take a closer look at Facebook's new equations that are culminating new trends of focus shift towards India.
Facebook number shift
India will surpass the US to lead the global tally of the largest Facebook user base on mobile by 2017, market research firm eMarketer said in a report. Going by the report, almost 1 billion users worldwide is expected to shift their accessing practice of the popular social network from laptops or desktops to their mobile phones at least once each month in 2015.
“India, world’s second-largest Facebook audience, will surpass 100 million mobile phone Facebook users for the first time this year and by 2017, will have more mobile Facebook users than the US,” eMarketer said.
According to the report, Facebook user base in the U.S. is expected to hit the 123.1 million mark closely followed by India at 101.5 million. However, by 2017, India will have the largest mobile phone user base targeted at 145.9 million followed by the US at 138.8 million, it added. The demography of Indian population is such that currently the country enjoys the largest population mix of youth and middle aged groups and with the smartphones and phablets flooding the markets in the subcontinent the number target of Facebook’s user base looks quite achievable.
Current stats
Recently, Facebook stated in a press release that growing Internet penetration and a large youth population has worked towards its tryst of expansion in the subcontinent where its user base currently stands at 112 million — which is the largest after the U.S. Of the 112 million users in India, almost a 100 million users access their Facebook on the mobile phone at least once a month and the count is rising as more and more internet ready smartphones are making their way into the subcontinent. About 45 million users in India are using their mobile phones every day to connect with their friends on Facebook. Globally, the company has 1.35 billion users, while the daily active users count stands at 864 million.
“The U.S. will remain the largest market for mobile phone Facebook users this year, and nearly 80% of users in the country, or 123.1 million people, will access the site regularly via mobile phones,” eMarketer said.
Overall, the number of social network users on the mobile phone interface globally will grow to 1.58 billion even with the ban in China and despite the strong presence of local social networks denting into Facebook’s clientele in other large population housing countries, like Russia, mobile Facebook users will still represent over 60% of the worldwide mobile social audience, reports said.
Our take
Facebook has timely and rightly recognized the growth areas and should be working towards strategizing their business targeting the niche areas of development like India and take the advantage of the swelling youth population of the subcontinent. It would be wise to wait and watch how the social networking giant works towards strengthening its foothold in the newfound area of growth before taking an investment call. From the onset of 2015 Facebook has witnessed a lot of action at its end from acquisitions to new areas of focus and has made great changes towards its strife to stay in the race with the rapidly changing tech world. It would be interesting to find out what would be the next move from the social networking giant having identified the new market to target on.
