Every year, analyst Mary Meeker presents her highly anticipated Internet trends report at the Recode code conference in California, USA. On Wednesday, she was at it again. The Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner released 294 slides in rapid succession, covering everything from smartphones to digital assistants.
The report covers a range of trends and topics including:
– Internet adoption
– Mobile usage
– Mobile ads
– Crypto/cryptocurrency/blockchain
– Voice/speech recognition
– Tech investment
– Ecommerce vs Brick & Mortar
– Subscription services
– Education
– Freelancing
– Transportation
– Enterprise
– China
– Immigration
Here are some salient features from Mary’s report:
- Voice-controlled products like Amazon Echo registered major growths. The Echo’s installed base in the US, for example, grew from 20 million in the 3rd quarter of 2017 to over 30 million in the 4th quarter
- 2017 went down in the history books as the 1st year in which smartphone unit shipments didn’t grow at all
- Internet user growth, too, which rose 7% in 2017, down from 12% the year before, suffered the same fate
- Despite the releases of expensive, US $1,000 iPhones & Samsung Galaxy Notes, the global average selling price of smartphones continued to decline
- Mobile payments are becoming easier to complete. China continued to lead the rest of the world in mobile payment adoption, with over 500 million active mobile payment users in 2017
- Tech companies are becoming a larger part of US business. In April, they accounted for 25% of US market capitalization.