India leads daily users growth for Facebook in December quarter

Facebook saw its base of daily users growing 9 per cent to 1.52 billion in the December quarter, led by growth in markets like India, Indonesia and the Philippines, the social networking giant has said.

The daily active users (DAUs) represented about 66 per cent of the 2.32 billion monthly active users (MAUs) in the December 2018 quarter, Facebook's Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said during the fourth quarter investor call.

He added that MAUs -- users who have used Facebook within the month -- grew by 191 million or 9 per cent compared to last year.

"Q4 was a strong quarter, wrapping up a good year for our business... Daily active users on Facebook reached 1.52 billion, up 9 per cent compared to 2017, led by growth in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines," he said.

Facebook on Wednesday said its profit for the December 2018 quarter grew 61 per cent to USD 6.8 billion, while revenue was higher by 30 per cent to USD 16.6 billion from the year-ago period.

For the full-year, net income expanded 39 per cent to USD 22.1 billion and revenue grew by 38 per cent to USD 55 billion.

Asked about integration of various services like WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said the company is "really early in thinking through this".

"There's a lot more that we need to figure out before we finalise the plans. And then, of course, this is going to be a long-term project that I think will probably be to whatever extent we end up doing it in -- a 2020 thing or beyond," he added.

He asserted that the company is not focussing on commercial benefit in this case.

"...Commercial benefit, but that really isn't the big focus here. The first reason that I'm excited about this is moving more to end-to-end encryption by default and more of our products. People really like this in WhatsApp. I think it's the... It's the direction that we should be going in with more things in the future," he said.