People sometimes ask why I have seemingly random slides pinned to the wall behind my desk. The slides are all from past presentations given by longtime Morgan Stanley analyst-turned-Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Mary Meeker, once named “Queen of the Net” by Barron’s.
Well, Meeker unleashed her latest stat-packed, rapid-fire presentation on Internet trends Tuesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, and some of these slides will also be making their way to my wall. The video of her presentation isn’t yet available, but you can see her deck on Scribd and embedded below.
Here are a handful of the insights contained in her presentation (in bold) and some brief thoughts from me:
- 81 percent of users of the top 10 global Internet properties are outside the United States: It’s hardly an insight to say that the web is global, but this stat really emphasizes that fact. Less than 5 percent of the world’s population resides in the U.S.: are you considering the language and cultural differences of the other 95+ percent and how they should affect your strategy, writing, information architecture and design?
- Between 2007 and 2010, China added more Internet users than exist in the U.S.: See above.
- The 3G mobile subscriber base grew 35 percent year-on-year, but it still only accounts for 17 percent of all mobile subscribers: Mobile data speeds are increasing, but for most people using the mobile Internet is still an exercise in patience. Are you counting bytes on your sites and apps? Every second you make your audience wait is another chance you won’t get your message across or won’t make your sale.
- Smartphone sales in North America exceeded feature (dumb) phone sales in the first quarter of 2011 and that inflection point happened three months earlier in Western Europe: Soon, all phones will be smartphones.
- 60 percent of Pandora’s traffic comes from mobile devices, 55 percent for Twitter and 33 percent for Facebook: It’s not just your owned media that will be consumed on mobile devices; you need to consider how people will see your message on social media.
- Audio will be the next big interface: We’ve gone from keyboard and mouse to touch screens already. Apple’s Siri is the first well-known application of a voice interface. Think of all the places where this could help us: the car, the garage, the kitchen, the living room. Or think how doctors could benefit from voice interfaces in their many hospital settings.
- Ad spending is out of whack: 27 percent of ad spending is on print media, but we only spend 8 percent of our media time with print. We spend another 8 percent on mobile devices, which only sees 0.5 percent of ad spending: I’m sure we’ll see this hit an equilibrium sooner than later.
- Time spent on social networking sites surpassed time spent on portals in June:
This surprised me. Does anyone use portals still? - Combined smartphone and tablets sales surpassed laptop and desktop PC sales in the fourth quarter of 2010: Do you really need another stat to see the trend line?
- 85 percent of the world’s population is covered by wireless signals versus 80 percent serviced by the electrical grid: Wow
Those are just the points I found most interesting; take a perusing through this thing yourself.