India is set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest Facebook market by number of users as early as 2015, according to social media analysts, driven by growing internet penetration and high rates of growth in mobile connections.

“India could overtake the United States in the next three years. Last year, Facebook users in India doubled. Growth will be driven by mobile internet users in second- and third-tier cities,” Shalini Verma, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner told CNBC, noting that the U.S. market is saturated in terms of user numbers.

As Facebook’s third largest market, India is home to over 45 million users, behind Brazil and the United States with 47 and 157 million users, respectively, according to the latest data from Facebook's advertising platform.

With approximately 120 million internet users, India’s internet population is forecast to grow threefold to almost 400 million users by the end of 2015 to mid-2016, according to Suhale Kapoor, Executive Vice President at analytics and market research company AbsolutData. Kapoor says by that time, India will have surpassed the U.S. in terms of Facebook users.

With smartphone prices declining and data rates among the cheapest in the world, Kapoor believes the mobile platform will drive the growth in Facebook’s penetration in India.

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