Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Reliance Jio Infocomm’s free data offer has supported the social media giant’s revenue growth in Q4 2016.
Reliance Jio started offering free voice and data services, as part of the promotion to enhance its presence in the Indian telecom market, from September 2016. Reliance Jio, which is aiming to get 100 million customers, will continue the free 4G data offer till March 31, 2017. Jio attracted nearly 72 million users to its 4G network till December 2016.
“Internet.org efforts and Facebook Lite platform on Android has been a great grower for us. In the fourth quarter, one of the callouts that we’ve seen is an increase in third-party promotional free data plans in places like India. So that clearly is having an impact in APAC and India was our strongest growth market,” said Mark Zuckerberg during an analyst call on Wednesday.
Facebook said its Q4 revenue was $8.8 billion (+51 percent). Q4 ad revenue of Facebook was $8.6 billion (+53 percent).
Facebook’s mobile ad revenue was $7.2 billion (+61 percent), and represented approximately 84 percent of total ad revenue. Desktop ad revenue grew 22 percent, despite a decline in desktop usage, helped by its efforts to limit the impact of ad blockers on advertisements served on personal computers.
In Q4, the average price per ad increased 3 percent and the total number of ad impressions served increased 49 percent, driven primarily by mobile feed ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook has approximately 17,000 employees (+34 percent).
Facebook said its capital expenditures (Capex) were nearly $4.5 billion (+78 percent) in 2016, as it invested to support the rapid growth of the business. Facebook expanded four of its existing data centers and began construction of four new data centers.
Facebook expects its 2017 capital expenditures will be in the range of $7 billion to $7.5 billion – mainly to fund the expansion of data center capacity and office facilities to support the growth of business.
Profit of Facebook was $10.2 billion (+177 per cent) in 2016 from the previous year’s total of $3.7 billion. Revenue of Facebook rose 54.2 percent to $27.6 billion in 2016, compared with $17.9 billion in 2015. Facebook generates revenue from Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Facebook’s net income rose 128 percent to $3.6 billion and revenue climbed 51 percent to $8.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
