// Every year, the ‘Queen of the Internet’ Mary Meeker delivers her hotly anticipated annual report. Here’s the highlights…
When one of the most powerful women in the world steps down from her mountain to give an annual address on Internet trends, the (tech and business) world listens. As they have since she first started doing this, during the Dotcom Boom years of the mid ’90s.
She may be at a new firm this year (her own, Bond Capital), but she’s still delivering her ‘Internet Trends Report’ at the Code conference, which you can view here or below (as usual, she speaks for 31 minutes breezing through 333 slides!).
Why’s this important?
Two reasons. The content is good and the ‘Trend is your Friend‘. If you’re running a tech business, you need to know the trends and jump on them. It’s far easier than swimming against the tide… plus what you see in the US trends in Australia sooner or later.
- Internet growth continues to slow – not surprising for something that has over 50% market share globally; there are now 3.8B people connected (3.6B last year). US has 18 of the top 30 internet companies.
- E-commerce solid but growth is slowing – now 15% of retail. Internet ad spending grew 22%. Google and Facebook continue to lead.
- Mobile device time surpassed TV time – a big moment in viewing behaviour.
- Voice is exploding – Amazon devices have doubled in sales to 40M.
- Image creation and sharing – continues to ramp; over half of Tweet impressions are in image and media (video). Canva warrants a mention in this regard. “People’s brains are wired for images – the internet has always been visual.”
- Interactive Gaming – up 6%, real-time play, shared and social. Fortnite up to 250M users.
- Freemium business models – on the rise, driving users and monetisation. (Canva mentioned again.) “We’re just getting started.”
- Efficient digital payments – now accounting for more than half all online payments.
- Messaging and productivity – Trello, Slack, bots, all growing strongly.
- Data – “is the new application”; it’s everywhere.
- Mobile shopping growing fast – especially using video and gaming. Shopping = entertainment.
- Internet usage – 26% of adults are constantly online; there are dangers here; people starting to monitor their usage. Privacy concerns. Negative news is drawing attention. “We can do better.”
- Amplification – good and bad can be amplified, especially by social.
- Cyber Attacks – are rising, focussing on sensitive data, and often State sponsored
- Economies – growing, jobs are being created, unemployment at 19 year low in US.
- On-demand – rising fast, but still only 5% of retail and restaurants; lots of upside growth. Remote work rising (5% of jobs).
- Online Education – enrollments rising: more users, courses & platforms.
- Immigrants required for tech – 60% large tech companies founded by immigrants.
- Healthtech – health care is digitising, driven by consumers.
- China – China’s WeChat and AliPay have 1B users, 200K mini-programs
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About Mary Meeker
Former Wall Street analyst and now VC, Mary worked at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley (where she was lead manager for the Netscape float and later on the Google IPO.) She published her first internet report in 1995. She’s done an annual presentation ever since.
Main Image: screenshot of Mary Meeker presenting at Code 2019 Conference.