Asia is the fastest-growing region for new subscribers to social networking site Facebook despite restrictions on access in China, a senior company executive said yesterday.
Speaking at the opening of Facebook’s first Asian sales office in Singapore, Facebook vice-president Blake Chandlee said its growth in the region was outpacing the rest of the world.
Facebook currently claims more than 500 million registered users worldwide, with 54 percent said to be logging on to the site daily.
Chandlee, the commercial director for regions outside North America and western Europe, declined to give regional or country user breakdowns except for Singapore, which has nearly 3 million users out of a population of 5 million.
“At the regional level, if you look at the big four, what we call, theaters, you’ve got North America, you’ve got EMEA [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] you’ve got Asia, you’ve got Latin America,” Chandlee said.
“Asia is definitely the fastest-growing amongst those big theaters ... Asia’s got some of the fastest-growing countries in it, certainly,” said Chandlee, who described Facebook’s growth in India as “tremendous”.
China restricted access to the site in July last year amid deadly ethnic unrest in the restive far-western Xinjiang region, but users have found ways of breaching the censorship wall.
Facebook set up an Asian sales office in Singapore to help regional brands in executing their marketing campaigns on the platform, Chandlee said.
“The Asian market’s a very, very big market for us.” he said. “It’s an enormous opportunity for us.”
“Singapore has been a great market. We nearly have 3 million people in Singapore alone, which means having a huge percentage of the total population on Facebook,” he stated.
“We see that across the region really, we’re pretty excited about it,” he said.
Founded in 2004 and based in Palo Alto, California, Facebook does not publish financial results, but research firm eMarketer said last month it should rake in more than US$1 billion in advertising revenue this year.
STILL HOPEFUL: Delayed payment of NT$5.35 billion from an Indian server client sent its earnings plunging last year, but the firm expects a gradual pickup ahead Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s No. 5 PC vendor, yesterday reported an 87 percent slump in net profit for last year, dragged by a massive overdue payment from an Indian cloud service provider. The Indian customer has delayed payment totaling NT$5.35 billion (US$162.7 million), Asustek chief financial officer Nick Wu (吳長榮) told an online earnings conference. Asustek shipped servers to India between April and June last year. The customer told Asustek that it is launching multiple fundraising projects and expected to repay the debt in the short term, Wu said. The Indian customer accounted for less than 10 percent to Asustek’s
‘DECENT RESULTS’: The company said it is confident thanks to an improving world economy and uptakes in new wireless and AI technologies, despite US uncertainty Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it plans to build a new server manufacturing factory in the US this year to address US President Donald Trump’s new tariff policy. That would be the second server production base for Pegatron in addition to the existing facilities in Taoyuan, the iPhone assembler said. Servers are one of the new businesses Pegatron has explored in recent years to develop a more balanced product lineup. “We aim to provide our services from a location in the vicinity of our customers,” Pegatron president and chief executive officer Gary Cheng (鄭光治) told an online earnings conference yesterday. “We
LEAK SOURCE? There would be concern over the possibility of tech leaks if TSMC were to form a joint venture to operate Intel’s factories, an analyst said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday stayed mum after a report said that the chipmaker has pitched chip designers Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Broadcom Inc about taking a stake in a joint venture to operate Intel Corp’s factories. Industry sources told the Central News Agency (CNA) that the possibility of TSMC proposing to operate Intel’s wafer fabs is low, as the Taiwanese chipmaker has always focused on its core business. There is also concern over possible technology leaks if TSMC were to form a joint venture to operate Intel’s factories, Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺)
It was late morning and steam was rising from water tanks atop the colorful, but opaque-windowed, “soapland” sex parlors in a historic Tokyo red-light district. Walking through the narrow streets, camera in hand, was Beniko — a former sex worker who is trying to capture the spirit of the area once known as Yoshiwara through photography. “People often talk about this neighborhood having a ‘bad history,’” said Beniko, who goes by her nickname. “But the truth is that through the years people have lived here, made a life here, sometimes struggled to survive. I want to share that reality.” In its mid-17th to
RSS