Longtime Morgan Stanley analyst and Kleiner Perkins investor Mary Meeker has released her annual Internet Trends report, a widely read data-filled compendium of where the technology and media industries are headed. Meeker, who currently leads growth-stage investments for venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, presented the report at the Code technology conference in California on Wednesday. You can access the full presentation here.
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Here a some of the key takeaways:
1. Smartphone growth is slowing: The number of smartphones sold only increased by 3% in 2016, compared to the year prior, when smartphone shipments rose 10%. The growth in the number of people who have bought and used a smartphone is also slowing Smartphone installations are up 12% in 2016 compared to a 25% gain in 2015.
2. Online advertising is growing thanks to mobile. Revenue from online ads is up 22% in 2016 compared to a 20% increase in 2015. However, most of this additional spending is now coming from mobile devices, as mobile ad revenue is now greater than from desktop ads. Additionally, global Internet advertising is finally expected to pass TV spending in the next six months, said Meeker. Unsurprisingly, ads from Google and Facebook’s ad networks account 85% of U.S. Internet ad growth, showing the dominance of the two technology giants in the online advertising world.
3. Voice is on the rise. People are increasingly using voice assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant, said Meeker. According to the report, 20% of mobile searches were made using a voice query in 2016.
4. The bar for quality customer support is rising. Meeker said that 82% of customers stopped doing business with a company in 2016 after a bad experience compared to 76% in 2014.
5. E-commerce is growing. Meeker said the number of packages shipped in the U.S. Rose 9% in 2016, and e-commerce continues to grow. Meeker also said that online retail sales in the U.S. Increased 15% from 2015 to 2016.
6.Video gaming is evolving, and it’s still early days. Video gaming is now a $100 billion business globally, with close to half of that revenue coming from Asia. There are now 2.6 billion gamers globally compared to 100 million in 1995. The current trend, explained Meeker, is collaborative play compared to individual gaming in the past. Mobile gaming is also on the rise, with mobile game play up 300% from 2015 to 2016, according to Meeker.
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7. Streaming media is growing. Revenue from subscription and streaming music services like Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music now represents 52% of music recording revenue compared to 0% 13 years ago, said Meeker. Netflix’s share of home entertainment revenue has gone from 0% to over 30% of total home entertainment revenue in the past 10 years, eating away at the market share of cable operators and other media companies.
8. China is in the golden age of mobile entertainment. The number of China’s mobile Internet users rose 12% in 2016 to 700 million, compared to 11% growth in 2015. Mobile Internet usage itself grew 30% in 2016, said Meeker. The companies that are commanding mobile minutes from Chinese consumers are Tencent, which owns popular chat app WeChat, e-commerce giant Alibaba, and search engine Baidu.
9. Transportation is growing in China too. China’s on-demand transportation including cars and bikes represents 67% of the global share of on-demand services. Meeker says consumers in China took 10 billion trips in 2015. Use of on-demand bikes, in particular, are growing, with two-thirds of users riding them more than three times per week.
10. Internet competition in India is heating up. India’s smartphone shipments were up 15% in the first quarter of 2017 and up 5% annually from 2015 to 2016. The cost of mobile data in India is also falling, which is prompting increased Internet use. With that opportunity and growth, explained Meeker, Internet companies are in a growing battle for consumer attention and purchases in India.
