Facebook Comes Before Tap Water as Indian Shanty Town Kids Get Smartphones
August 4, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Facebook Comes Before Tap Water
Kainaz Amaria/Bloomberg
College students check Facebook accounts on smartphone devices in Mumbai on Aug. 3, 2011.
College students check Facebook accounts on smartphone devices in Mumbai on Aug. 3, 2011. Photographer: Kainaz Amaria/Bloomberg
Facebook Comes Before Tap Water
Kainaz Amaria/Bloomberg
Vijay Singh registers at an internet cafe in Mumbai on Aug. 3, 2011.
Vijay Singh registers at an internet cafe in Mumbai on Aug. 3, 2011. Photographer: Kainaz Amaria/Bloomberg
In a two-room shanty with no running
water in northern Mumbai, Darshana Verma makes tea on a small
stove. On a bench nearby, her 18-year-old son, Vishal, messages
Facebook friends on the keypad of his Nokia smartphone.
“This is the Internet age,” said the 36-year-old domestic
helper, who spent more than half her $300 monthly income on
Samsung Electronics Co. and Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) mobile phones for her
children. “Facebook is there, all these things happen there now
– they make friends, maybe they can even find jobs there.”
Cheaper Internet-ready phones may make India Facebook
Inc.’s biggest market after the U.S. next year with more than 50
million users, according to Nielsen Co. As Google Inc.’s rival
social network also gains in popularity, companies including
Pepsi Co. are boosting Internet advertising to reach the 352
million children under age 15 who are coming online.
“There’s a mob out there,” said Tarun Abhichandani, group
business director at IMRB International, part of WPP Group, the
world’s biggest ad agency. “India has a young demographic, and
it’s social networking that brings them online.”
The number of active accounts in India jumped 85 percent to
32 million this year, according to socialbakers.com, which
tracks user data at the Palo Alto, California-based company.
That’s the world’s third-biggest behind the 153 million in the
U.S. and 39.2 million in Indonesia.
Mobile handset sales in the world’s second-fastest growing
major economy will surpass 206 million units annually in 2014
from 175.9 million last year, Gartner Inc. forecasts.
Liking MTV
Pepsi and Viacom Inc. (VIA/B)’s MTV have been quick to tap the
popularity of Facebook in the South Asian nation through
promotions and contests. Their Indian pages have garnered 1.4
million and 2.9 million “likes,” respectively.
“Indians want brands to communicate with them using social
media,” said a Nielsen report, adding that 60 percent of Indian
social-media users are “open” to being approached by brands.
Online advertising in India rose 26 percent to 9.9 billion
rupees ($223 million) in the year ended March, according to IMRB.
Advertising on social networking sites grew as much as 65
percent from the year before.
“The shift to online advertising is just starting to
happen,” Abhichandani said. “The number of Internet users here
is on the rise and is going to keep rising for some time.
Advertisers are realizing that.”
Facebook opened an office in Hyderabad in southern India in
September to serve users, advertisers and developers in the
country and around the world, spokeswoman Kumiko Hidaka wrote in
an e-mail. The company is trying to improve service by working
with mobile partners and “building relationships with India’s
strong network of developers and entrepreneurs,” she said.
China Block
Facebook is blocked in China, the world’s most-populous
nation. The social-networking company has held talks with
potential partners about how to gain a foothold in the country,
a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News in April.
China, the world’s largest Internet market with more than
450 million Web users, bans pornography, gambling and content
critical of the ruling Communist Party.
“Facebook has chosen to focus on open markets, rather than
markets like China where there’s censorship and control,” said
Foong King Yew, vice president of research at Gartner in
Singapore. “India’s the biggest of those. It’s rapidly growing.
It’s an untapped market.”
A mobile phone allows 22-year-old student Rachel Thomas to
log on when she’s at school.
“Facebook is the first thing I do each day,” said Thomas,
who is studying for a master’s degree at the Delhi School of
Social Work and counts about 1,000 friends on the social-
networking site. “I don’t know anybody who’s not on Facebook.
My mom’s on Facebook. My whole class is on Facebook.”
Bollywood Tweets
Twitter Inc. is also gaining in India, helped by iconic
users like Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, business tycoon Anand Mahindra and former minister Shashi Tharoor. Tata Consultancy
Services Ltd. (TCS), India’s largest software exporter, posts its
earnings in 140-character messages on the micro-blogging website.
LinkedIn Corp. has 10 million members in India, its second-
largest market after the U.S., according to the Mountain View,
California-based company’s website.
Facebook faces new competition from Google+, which started
June 29. The service had 6.44 million visitors in the U.S.
through July 24 and 3.62 million in India, not including mobile
usage, said Andrew Lipsman, ComScore Inc. (SCOR)’s vice president for
industry analysis.
Google is testing a mobile application in the U.S. and
India that allows users to send status updates via SMS without
an Internet connection. Most phone users in India don’t have
Internet browsing. Facebook has a similar service in India.
‘Facebook Button’
Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) said its growth in emerging markets
such as India and Indonesia has largely been driven by social
networking applications like Facebook for BlackBerry 2.0. Rival
Huawei Technologies Co. sells phones with a “Facebook button.”
“You press it once and all your social networks are
integrated in one — you don’t have to log in everywhere,” said
Paul Scanlan, vice president of solution and marketing for the
South Pacific region at Huawei. “If a phone doesn’t have a
Facebook button, you’re not going to sell 10 million handsets.”
A big draw for many Indians is the falling cost. Phones
with Internet browsing capability sell for as little as $23.
For Verma, who never learned to use a computer and saved
for 10 months to buy her elder daughter’s phone, that gives her
children an opportunity she didn’t have.
“What I don’t know about — Facebook, Internet — they
need to know about,” she said. “It is worth the expense.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Ketaki Gokhale in Mumbai at
kgokhale@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Young-Sam Cho at
ycho2@bloomberg.net
