Facebook Inc’s penetration rate in Taiwan is higher than in any other market in the world, an executive of the world’s largest social network said yesterday.
Facebook director for North Asia Jayne Leung (梁幼莓) told a press briefing that the number of active Facebook users in Taiwan reached 15 million per month in the fourth quarter of last year, representing about 65 percent penetration among the country’s population and edging out Hong Kong’s 61 percent for the top spot.
Taiwan had a Facebook penetration rate of about 60 percent in the second quarter of last year, when it was ranked top in Asia, according to Facebook data.
The number of daily users in Taiwan also reached 11 million during the fourth quarter, up 10 percent from the second quarter, while active daily mobile users increased by 20 percent to 8.5 million, Leung said.
Facebook did not give Taiwan user statistics for the third quarter.
“Taiwan is a very healthy market for us and we have seen huge growth here in the mobile segment,” Leung said.
Facebook plans to hire more sales and marketing staff in its North Asia offices this year to serve advertisers in key vertical industries, such as e-commerce, fast-moving consumer goods, telecommunications, tourism and finance, she said.
The social network will also add a new advertisement reseller in Taiwan to seek more business opportunities from mobile ads, Leung said.
In the fourth quarter of last year, Facebook’s mobile ad revenue accounted for 53 percent of its overall revenue, reaching US$1.25 billion, higher than the company’s total revenue in the same period of 2012.
Its mobile-only monthly active users amounted to 296 million during the October-to-December period of last year, nearly doubling the 157 million in the year-earlier period, according to Facebook data.
US-based tech giant Google said yesterday that its efforts to build four underseas cables to connect Taiwan with the world had created more than 64,000 jobs and generated about US$26 billion in GDP for Taiwan as of 2021. The US company has transformed Taiwan into a strategic cloud infrastructure hub in the world. The four undersea cables are part of the company’s investments in cloud infrastructure in Taiwan, and on the back of the undersea cables, a data center and a Google Cloud Region, which is a geographic area in which Google provides infrastructure and services for deploying applications, Google said in
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) largely omitted mention of its controversial Mate 60 smartphone series at a grand showcase of its new consumer products yesterday. The Shenzhen-based company would increase smartphone production in response to demand, said consumer division chief Richard Yu (余承東), without naming the handset triggering that surge. The Mate 60 Pro earned international notoriety with its advanced made-in-China processor last month, causing concern in Washington about Huawei’s progress toward developing in-house chipmaking capabilities despite US trade curbs. Huawei’s new phones have fired up the company’s sales and were among the top sellers in China in the week before Apple Inc’s
SLUMP: The electronics, machinery and traditional industries posted the largest decline in the past year; overall, sectors showed gains over the previous month Taiwan’s industrial production index decreased 10.53 percent year-on-year to 91.38 last month, falling for a 15th consecutive month on an annual basis, as weak global economic growth continued to weigh on end-market demand and investment momentum, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday. The industrial production index gauges output in Taiwan’s four main industries: manufacturing, electricity and gas supply, water supply, and mining and quarrying. Last month’s decline was the smallest contraction since March when the index dropped 16.03 percent from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, the index rose 7.28 percent, marking a second straight month of improvement,
Micron Technology Inc on Wednesday predicted a steeper loss than anticipated in the current quarter, indicating that an industry slump is still weighing on the largest US maker of memory chips. The company projected a fiscal first-quarter loss of as much as US$1.14 a share, excluding some items. Analysts had estimated a US$0.96 loss. On the bright side, revenue is expected to start recovering in the period. Micron predicted sales of US$4.2 billion to US$4.6 billion, compared with an estimate of US$4.21 billion. For Micron and competitors Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc, this year has been brutal. Customers in their