It’s an annual ritual. Once again, Mary Meeker’s trend report is making the rounds. For anyone even mildly interested in the state of the Internet economy the 117 slide presentation (over half of that is an in-depth appendix) is a must read.
Unveiled today at WSJ’s D11 conference Meeker, a partner at venture company Kleiner Perkins, covers everything from the growth of the Internet (China leads with most new users over past four years) to mobile operating share (Android dominates), and to the explosion of photo sharing (over 500 million photos are shared every day) and to the future (“wearables” gets it own section this year).
Fair warning: this is a dense, comprehensive report. Be sure to grab at least two or three shots of your favorite espresso before daring to wade into its data-laden depths.
After reviewing and then re-reviewing the presentation here’s some of my key takeaways, or just interesting points that caught my attention:
— 1 in 5 Internet user is based in China
— Google is the top Internet property (no surprise there), but Yahoo holds its own at #4 (not too shabby considering its pre-Meyer struggles)
— 100 hours of YouTube video is uploaded every minute (that’s a lot of soccer balls hitting crotches)
— At 15%, Americans (and Canadians) undershare compared to the world average of 24%
— Mobile is a rocket ship (just ask any traditional PC maker how that’s impacted financials)
— Hands-free “wearables” with sensors (i.e. Google Glass) could be the next big thing – don’t laugh, people laughed at the PC in the early days (consider me a skeptic)
— this decade (2010-2020) continues to face a shortage of skilled workers with computer science degrees
I would’ve liked to have seen more data related to the health of the start-up economy. Though she touches on recent IPOs including an x-ray of LinkedIn’s success, there’s little in the presentation in regards to the explosion of tech entrepreneurship we’ve seen in recent years. I can’t recall Silicon Valley being as frothy (uh-oh) since I was running an IT team at Cisco back in 1998.
Here’s Mary Meeker’s complete presentation: