Analyst says India may overtake US as Facebook's top market soon

With Facebook training its eyes on emerging markets in the past few years, it has now emerged that India could soon overtake the US as the social networking website’s number one market.

Quartz has reported that Nathan Eagle, CEO of Social Marketing and Global Research company Jana, has predicted that it will only be a matter of months before India replaces the US when it comes to being Facebook’s largest user base. The publication reports that Eagle, earlier in November, had forecast that most of Facebook’s revenues could come from emerging markets by 2015.

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At the Paley International Council’s IC Summit 2013, Eagle spoke in depth about his predictions when it comes to India becoming home to the largest user-base for Facebook. India currently has about 114.8 million Facebook users, not too far behind US with 146.8 million users. It’s not a huge margin if you compare the fact that Brazil, at number three, is home to merely 69 million Facebook users.

What makes India more likely to surge ahead is the year-over-year change displayed by the country. While US’ numbers stand at mere 5.2 million users every year, India shows a lot of promise with 36.7 million new users every year. The country shows an annual growth of a whopping 47 percent, compared to US’ 3.7 percent. Essentially, the US market seems to have been saturated with India’s still booming, ready to embrace Facebook further.

While we must remember these are but predictions, Facebook’s shift from being a website for developed markets to the champion of emerging ones is now near completion. What’s more laudable is the company’s resolve to help users from emerging markets get online from mobile phones.