Facebook growth in India and the campaign they have kicked off with
The Popular social networking site Facebook finds India a major growth market, where the number of users have more than doubled in the past one year, as against near-zero diffusion in the neighboring country China.
Facebook India Page
Facebook Offers mobile users in India, opening a new account via particular URL (http://m.facebook.com/tt) using mobile phone, will get talk time worth Rs 50 free. This offer is meant only for people who don’t have Facebook account currently and register themselves only via their mobile phone. Once a user Sign Up for Facebook account, they would be entitled to receive talk time worth Rs 50 in about 3 days.
Facebook has designed the campaign targeting the large student entrance from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities of India where the access of Facebook is still pretty low. Most of the students prefer to have pre-paid connectivity and Rs 50 talk time offer makes important value addition against a simple sign up with world’s largest social network.
The third largest country in the list of Facebook with more than 60 million users, this promotion is exclusively designed for India. Brazil is recently seen fast growth in Facebook users and is in a number 2 position. Interestingly, Facebook has not rolled out any similar promotions in Brazil or any other country.
The current population of Facebook users in India is just 5.06% against 73.3% online users penetration. But, this low population in India inherits an opportunity and great growth which no other country could ever match. For Facebook, looking to up and increase their revenue, India is a key source for future growth.
The growth of 132 per cent in India has been higher than many other countries, including home market in US. India has got important share in that after China. The most between all continents in world’s 17.84% of mobile web traffic is being originated from Asia. Surprisingly, 48.8% of Indian internet users are available on mobile and this figure is only jump to progress in next 2 -3 years.
The evolution of Smartphone is another big reason, making India as one of the dearest country for many companies. As the second largest mobile market, India has been outclassed by most of the countries in Smartphone approval rate. The mobile will drive Facebook’s growth in India. With just 2.72%, India Smartphone industry is far behind along with China.
With the emergence of local handset makers in India like Micromax and Karbonn and focused approach by Samsung, the situation is expected to change by 2015.