Insights from Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends Report is now available.
All key digital trends and statistics are in this bible – 164 pages of dense data .. but a must read.
Download the presentation – from this PDF link – or via the KPCB website
Most important insights to remember:
1/Internet Access Growth Slowing, But Not On Mobile
The total number of Internet users is growing less than 10% a year, though new initiatives like Google’s Project Loon and Facebook’s Internet.org hope to increase the rate of connection.
2/30% Of All Mobile Users Are Now Smartphone Users
So if you only make money on the web, you’re in trouble
3/Tablet Shipments Increased 53% In 2013
Though purchase cycles may be slower than phones, people are still rabidly buying up tablets.
4/Mobile Now Accounts For 25% Of All Web Usage
That’s up from 14% a year ago. And in North America, mobile is 19% of all usage up from 11% a year ago.
5/Each New Device Type Has 10X The Previous Install Base
“The Internet Of Things” could be the upcoming 100 billion unit device category.
6/Internet Advertising Grew 16% This Year
Mobile grew 47% yet still makes up just 11% of the total, indicating lots of room for mobile advertising to grow. Meanwhile, Google’s average revenue per user is now 6X Facebook’s, and Facebook’s is 2X Twitter’s.
7/People Spend 20% Of Their Media Time On Mobile
But mobile gets just 4% Of ad spend, leaving a big opportunity for mobile ad spend growth. Print ad spend will decrease to balance out, as it gets 19% of spend but accounts for just 5% of media consumption time.
8/App Purchases Make Up 68% Of Money Made On Mobile
While advertising makes up 32% of mobile monetization. It may be easier to get users to pay $1 than make them stick around to see $1 worth of ads
9/Cybersecurity Threats Are Intensifying
Huge breaches like Target and eBay should make all businesses weary right now.
10/Bubble? It’s Not As Bad As The 2000 Dot Com Bubble
Total tech IPOs, tech IPO volume, number of tech companies raising money, and total venture money raised by tech startups are all down 50% to 87% from 2000. That means we’re not tempting a crash the way Pets.com did.
11/Social Networking Is Changing From Broadcast To Private Sharing
Rather than share a little with a lot of people, we’re sharing a lot with a few close friends. There are now. This trend has helped giant international messaging apps rise to power.
12/The Great Unbundling Of 2014
Users want quick, straight-forward apps that nail a single purpose, not bloated Swiss Army knives that bury important functionality. That’s why tech giants are buying or building standalone apps.
13/Facebook Leads Social Traffic Referrals with 21%
Pinterest contributes 7% and Twitter 1% of total social referral traffic to other sites. BuzzFeed and Huffington Post dominate on Facebook, while the BBC and New York Times rule Twitter. This indicates hard news may fare better on Twitter, while human interest stories and memes win on Facebook.
14/The Rise Of BuzzFeed
Unique visitors are up 3X in the last year to 130 million monthlies thanks to careful headline optimization and relatable content.
15/The Internet Is Disrupting Hotels, Commerce, Food
We don’t walk to do anything anymore.
16/Music Streaming Up, Sales Down
Digital song sales fell for the first time in 2013, while streaming grew 32% in 2013 as the connected, multi-device world makes files a nuisance and the cloud more accessible.
17/Cryptocurrency Soars As Bitcoin Wallet Count Grows 8X In A Year
Fascination, fee-less money transfers, and digital tipping all push the cryptocurrency trend.
18/Photo Sharing Up 50% Over 2013 In Just The First Half Of 2014
Driven mostly by growth in WhatsApp and Snapchat.
19/We Upload Tons
Photos, but also fitness, events, and code.(refer to presentation, slide 21)
20/ And Privately Share Even More
Tinder now makes 21 million matches a day. Compare that to the fact that there are only 70,000 bars and nightclubs in the US and you see how dating is changing.
21/New Smartphone Sensors Fuel The Big Data Age
Smartphones may replace some of the casual fitness wearables like the now-scuttled Nike FuelBand
22/Cheaper Computing And Cloud Hosting Means Leaner Startups
It costs less to get a business off the ground than ever before.
23/Storage Is Becoming A Common Commodity
Which could spell trouble for startups like Dropbox and Box.
24/Smartphones Are Becoming Affordable, But Data Costs Are Still High
Increasing accessibility is now about data compression and innovative connectivity distribution from hot air balloons, drones, and satellites.
25/Mobile Interfaces Are Changing Everything
Hailing a cab (Uber), finding local businesses (Yelp), booking a hotel room (Airbnb), navigating traffic (Waze), Listening to music (Spotify), controlling television (Amazon) — it’s all mobile now.
26/ We’re Mining Lots Of Data
But only meaningfully analyzing a fraction of it. We’ve accepted data miners into our lives, but can’t understand the data fast enough.
27/Screens Are Proliferating
Thanks to the rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets, there’s almost always a glowing rectangle in sight.
28/ Many Developing Nations Leapfrogged The Laptop/PC Era
And went straight to using smartphones.
29/The Second Screen Era Has Arrived
This opens big opportunities for companion content.
30/ Second Screens Help Us Avoid Commercials
Why watch untargeted TV commercials when you can tweet?
31/Competition Increases Amongst Smart TV Adapters And Remote Controls
Layback experiences will emerge to entertain couch-dwellers.
32/Smart TVs Still Less Than 10% Of All TVs
As people keep old televisions around, the market will fragment into smart and dumb TV watchers.
33/ TV Channels Are Growing Fast As Mobile Apps
This changes the broadcast model to one of interactive content.
34/ Don’t Underestimate YouTube’s Massive Audience
Niche content creators are finding legions of fans.
35/YouTube Stars Are The New Movie Stars
And social media stars on services like Vine and Instagram are finding brands willing to pay them to produce branded content.
36/ Video Monetizes With Skippable Ads
Skip option keeps users happy, encourages marketers to make their ads entertaining, and lets advertisers only pay when their ad is actually watched.
37/ Spectator Gaming Is the New Pro Sports
Twitch hit 45 million monthly users last year, and is more popular than websites for ESPN and major league baseball. Developers must equip gamers with ways to stream their play.
38/ Mobile’s Share Of Online Video Viewing Grew 2X In The Last Year
Mobile viewing time is up sharply, indicating users will watch longer format content on the small screen too.
39/ China Becomes A Critical Market
China’s GDP is rising quickly, and 80% of its Internet users are now on mobile.
40/International Audience
The majority of users of most top US web services come from abroad.
41/Chinese Companies Are Innovating, Not Just Copying
WeChat has 400 million users, some who now use the messaging app’s banking feature for stock market investing, buying coupons/deals, and ordering taxis. WeChat also has features to help with shopping, cooking, and groceries.
42/The Uber Of China
Didi Taxi is a big deal
43/Top Public Tech Company Valuations
China has 4 in the top 20.
44/Tech Giants Have Acquisition Fever
Facebook leads with $24 billion spent on acquisitions from 2012 to now.
45/ Immigrants Build American Tech Companies
This indicates that the US must reform its high-skilled immigration policy, including issuing more H-1B Visas.
46/ We’re Educating Immigrants But Not Letting Them Work Here
If allowed to stay, they could stimulate the economy
47/ Global Internet User Growth Is Slowing Down
7% growth in top established markets like China and the USA, 20% growth in big markets like India and Mexico.
48/ Smartphone Penetration Grew Around 17% In Top Markets Like USA And Japan
But can’t understand the data fast enough.
49/Mobile Traffic’s Percentage Of Total Internet Traffic Is Growing 1.5X Per Year
And it’s expected to keep growing that fast or faster. The world is going mobile in a hurry.
50/ Not So Bubbly
Tech’s $17.4 Trillion Market Cap Is 19% Of The S&P 500. That’s much lower than the height of the bubble in 2000 when it was 35% of the S&P 500, indicating that while valuations are high, they aren’t nearly as bad as what caused the dot com crash.
51/Conclusions
The Internet as a whole is growing, but mobile is growing even faster. Mobile advertising spend lags behind, as does our ability to analyze all the big data collected from mobile sensors. Cybersecurity is getting harder, and China is becoming a tech superpower. Televison viewers are evolving to embrace the second screen, while also ditching TV for online video content. Any tech bubble that exists hasn’t swelled nearly as big as the one that caused the dot com crash. So while valuations seem high, businesses today are actually creating value, and have room to grow if they can master mobile.
Source: techCrunch
