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Facebook is looking to recognize user choices better and slice its offerings more finely, much beyond the eight basic versions. The logic: the more finely Facebook tailors itself to a user's device and network, the better the user experience. The longer a user lingers on Facebook, the greater the company's ad revenues. Easier said than done on a mobile, more so in an emerging market like India. It's easier to tackle the technology challenge for computers, where there are two operating systems and about five web browsers, and limited hardware configurations. On mobile phones, the problem amplifies as types of devices, operating systems, browsers, memory and networks spawn thousands of different combinations.
For universal coverage, in India alone, Facebook has to make its service usable on about 4,000 types of phones, with numerous variations. And they are nothing like what is found in the US, which is where 90% of the Facebook staff sits, brainstorms, writes code and creates user interfaces. The US market is about handsets that cost $600, while India is about less than $50 (Rs 2,500). "The new trend we are seeing (in India) is the use of inexpensive Android phones," says Marra. The US is post-paid, India is pre-paid. The US is single-sim, India is multiple-sim. The US is more data and less voice, India is the other way around. The US has high carrier loyalty, India has little. The US has 4G networks that log speeds of 100 mbps, India is still mostly 2G.
In a sense, India is a microcosm of many emerging markets, which present Facebook with greater room for expansion today. For example, in US and Canada, which accounted for 75% of the company's revenues in 2012, 47% of the population of those two countries is already on Facebook. That figure for Europe, another major market currently, is 36%.
By comparison, Asia is just 7.7% and the rest of the world 18%. While poverty and low levels of development is a barrier for people in these geographies to get on to Facebook and spend time there, the mobile is emerging as a powerful equaliser. Facebook is using India to see how it can harness that equalisation process. China is the world's most populous country, but Facebook is not present there for political reasons. Elsewhere,Brazil, its third-largest user base, is a PC-driven market. "India, almost more than any other country, is a mobile-first country," says Marra.
"For Facebook, the challenge of access to the larger population is not only in India, but the whole emerging world�from Asia to Africa to Latin America," says Ashvin Vellody, partner, management consulting, KPMG India, an audit and professional services firm. "India provides an ideal research and trial ground for internet access and managing scale with diversity."
So, those dozen handsets are headed for the Facebook Library at its US headquarters. Each handset will be kept in a container like the ones used to keep cookies�in the company, they call them 'bins'�and stacked on shelves. At any point of time, about 300 phones lie in these 'bins'.
About 2,000 engineers can access these devices. Also housed in this library are labs that simulate global network environments�1G, 2G, 3G, WiFi, 4G, LTE. "At the library, our engineers get an opportunity to know multiple devices in use, operating systems, styles, models, memory and network environments," says Marra. "Every month, we come out with a new version of the app. Things we learn help us upgrade."
Focus on basic phones
At a time when phones are becoming better by the day, Facebook is looking to swim in the other direction�towards basic phones and feature phones that have largely disappeared in the Western world. "Four things need to converge to make the Internet and a Facebook experience good on a phone: chip speed, number of cores, mobile networks and software," says Khalid Zamir, associate vice-president, manufacturing, Videocon Mobile Phones. "With each newer generation of phone, this convergence is improving and, by 2014, it will be possible to get a laptop kind of experience on a phone."
According to Lalitesh Kartagadda of Google India, the market is shifting from feature phones to smart-phones. "A Rs 3,000 smart-phone in three years will have the same competence as a Rs 10,000 smart-phone today," says the country head, products, Google India. "That will take care of some of the hardware challenges like clicking high-resolution photos and uploading them quickly on any site."
Marra says the rate at which Facebook is growing and the arc of its progression to mobile, the time is now. The company is adding 100 million subscribers in anything between four to seven months, including about two million new users a month in India. "With that kind of growth, each month is pretty long for us and we can't wait for devices to improve," he says. "Also, in India, people don't change phones for three to four years, so we have to focus on low-end devices as well."
That reading might have credence, given the internet usage numbers of Bharti Airtel. According to a senior marketing official of Bharti who did not want to be named, of its 48 million data users, 25 million are regular users. But of this, only 5 million access Internet on 3G networks, while the rest use 2G or basic-feature phones. Bharti has just rolled out 4G networks in some cities, but only a handful of devices�like iPhone 5, HTC 1 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2�support these superior Internet services. In Hyderabad, Marra and his team�each representing some aspect of Facebook, like news feed, mobile, search and messenger, among others� spent time interacting with students at the Women's College in Hyderabad University. They met officials of handset companies (Nokia, Micromax and Lava) and mobile-service companies (Bharti Airtel).
Elsewhere, they met villagers and students in organised meetings. They struck conversations with strangers to glean insights about what Indians do with mobiles. "For instance, voice and FM radio use is popular," says Kevin D'Souza, country growth manager, Facebook India. "People click pictures, but don't know how to share them or what to do with them. Lot of problems in downloading pictures or chatting are due to device limitations."
Kartagadda of Google believes the gap between hardware and software is narrowing, and the greater challenge to reach the next billion in Internet users is language and giving a visually rich experience on entry-level phones. "The hardware on a Rs 10,000 phone is as good as a laptop four years back. Devices will improve," he says. "But for users, you need more bandwidth on entry-level phones that can enable visually rich content to be delivered and a simple user interface." Adds Vellody of KPMG: "Facebook needs to focus on models that encourage wider adoption.
That includes dialects and devices to significantly impact adoption." Facebook is available in nine Indian languages, using translation tools and crowd sourcing, and plans to add more languages as per demand. "Facebook on desktop and laptops was primarily in English," says D'Souza. "Most existing users prefer English, but we are seeing a shift on mobile, with local languages picking up." |
