Buffering: Facebook reports first-ever quarterly decline in India

Increase in data package pricing has come in the way of Facebook’s user growth in the in India, said Dave Wehner, Meta’s chief financial officer said during the company’s December quarter earnings call.

Facebook has been facing headwinds in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, including tariff hikes in India, which has impacted growth in terms of young users, and a rise in COVID-19 cases across the globe.

“Facebook user growth was impacted by a few headwinds in the fourth quarter. In Asia-Pacific and Rest of World, we believe Covid resurgences during prior periods pulled forward user growth. User growth in India was also limited by an increase in data package pricing,” Dave Wehner said.

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“In addition to these factors, we believe competitive services are negatively impacting growth, particularly with younger audiences,” added Wehner. The company, in terms of its overall user growth is “certainly seeing an impact from strong competition, particularly with younger audiences,” Wehner added.

“If you look at kind of the overall user growth landscape for the fourth quarter, we’re seeing MAU and DAU in the US and Canada, sort of bounce around as sort of expected and indicated given our high level of penetration. And then if you look at the Rest of World, we’ve seen some headwinds there, kind of a little bit unique in the quarter in areas like India, where we saw data plan pricing increase lead to slower growth there. So that’s another kind of some unique elements of the quarter on that front,” he said.

According to market research firm Statista, Facebook has an estimated 350 million users in India. Facebook, however, doesn’t provide a country-wise breakup of its user base.

Global hit

Facebook has seen its daily active users (DAUs) drop for the first time in its 18-year history.

Facebook’s parent company Meta Networks says DAUs fell to 1.929 billion in the three months to the end of December, compared to 1.930 billion in the previous quarter. While the company’s user base growth was flat across more regions, its user base declined in United States and Canada, down to 195 million from 196 million in the previous quarter.
Chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s sales growth had been hit because users, especially younger ones, are leaving for rivals.

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Meta, which owns the world’s second-biggest digital advertising platform after Google, also said it had been hit by privacy changes on Apple’s operating system.

Wehner said the changes have made it harder for brands to target and measure their advertising on Facebook and Instagram and could have an impact “in the order of $10 billion” for this year.

While the company has been investing in video to compete with TikTok, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, it makes less money from those offerings than Facebook and Instagram feeds.