Facebook working on 'lite version' to target burgeoning simple feature phone market in India

As Facebook expands its user base to 1.1 billion, with the number rising steadily in countries like India and Brazil, the company is working on an initiative called 'Facebook for Every Phone'.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, simple feature phones that have largely disappeared in the western world are still the norm in developing countries like India and Brazil and 1 out of 8 mobile users access the social network from more than 3000 different models of these phones, some costing as little as 20 dollars.

The report said that many of these users, who rank among the world's poorest people, pay little or nothing to download their Facebook news feeds and photos, with the data usage subsidized by phone carriers and manufacturers.

A vice president in an e-marketing company said that in a lot of foreign markets, people thought that the Internet was Facebook.

Analysts think that Facebook has a powerful opportunity to win the long-term loyalty of millions of new global users by giving them their first taste of Internet through Facebook on a simple mobile phone, the report added.

The software has features that are common in more advanced versions of Facebook, including sticker-size emoticons in chat and Instagram-style filters to dress up photos, the report further said.