The Internet Boom Is So Over: Mary Meeker's Annual Internet Trends Report

Sell signal. Or the pause that refreshes? Highlights and link to full report below. JL

Mike Murphy reports in Quartz:

There are now about 3 billion global internet users, but user growth is stalling. Smartphone sales are slowing. Online video ads are ineffective. About 70% of on-demand rides in the world are requested in China. (But) there has been a 263% increase in non-technology companies acquiring and investing in tech companies.

Mary Meeker, a former Morgan Stanley internet analyst and now partner at venture-capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, delivered her annual internet trends report at this year’s Code conference in California today. Here are her slides:

2016 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Some highlights from the presentation:

• There are now about 3 billion global internet users, but user growth is stalling at about 9% year-on-year.
• But internet use in India is skyrocketing—it’s now the second-largest market behind China, passing the US, with over 277 million users.
• Smartphone sales are slowing, as is the yearly growth in the number of smartphone users, down to 21% from 31% last year.
• Internet advertising in the US has grown by about 20% since last year, reaching $60 billion—two-thirds of that growth has come from an increase in spending on mobile ads.
• Facebook’s yearly advertising revenue (up 59%) grew much more than Google’s (18%) last year.
• Online video ads are ineffective: 81% of people surveyed mute video ads, 62% are annoyed by pre-roll ads, and 92% have considered using ad-blocking software.
• Internet sales have increased from less than 2% of all retail sales in the US in 2000 to about 10% in 2015.
• But there’s still some room to grow in real life too: Online glasses store Warby Parker now makes more money per square foot in its US retail stores than Tiffany’s or Michael Kors.
• The time it takes retailers to get to $100 million in online sales is shrinking. It took Nike 14 years from the time its retail site launched, compared to nine years for Lululemon, and eight year for Under Armour.
• The rising Snapchat generation: Millennials communicate with text, but Generation Z prefers to communicate with images.
• The average Snapchat user plays with sponsored lenses for 20 seconds.
• Brand power in Facebook Live: When “Chewbacca mom” mentioned retailer Kohl’s twice in her viral video, the store’s app shot to the top of the downloads chart on the US iOS App Store.
• There are now over 3 billion images shared daily between Snapchat, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp—all but one of which are owned by Facebook.
• 55% of Pinterest users use the site to find products they want to buy.
• Messaging apps are moving from simple text tools to communicate with friends to platforms for commerce.
• There are 10 million business accounts on WeChat, and about 80% of all users follow one.
• Generation Y is the first generation to prefer chatting over the web or social media to talk to businesses, rather than over the phone.
• Computer recognition of speech has gone from about 70% to 90% accuracy in the last five years.
• 65% of US smartphone owners now use a voice assistant.
• By 2020, at least 50% of all searches online will be through voice or image search, according to Baidu’s chief scientist Andrew Ng.
• Only about 5% of US Amazon customers own an Amazon Echo—fewer than those that own a Fire TV streaming device.
• It’s time for self-driving cars: The average urban US worker spends about 42 hours a year sitting in delays on their commute, and the average person’s car is only in use about 4% of the time.
• Millennials don’t drive like their parents did: Only 77% of 16-44 year-olds have their licenses in the US today, compared with 92% in 1982.
• 71% of the time spent on mobile in China is divided between properties owned by three companies: Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu.
• 31% of Chinese WeChat users purchase something from retailers though the chat app.
• About 70% of the roughly 6.3 billion on-demand rides requested around the world in the first quarter of 2016 were requested in China.
• There’s been a 263% increase in the last three years of non-technology companies acquiring and investing in tech companies, such as GM buying Cruise Automation, and Fox Sports investing in DraftKings