Mary Meeker's Internet Trends Report

I’m feeling a little out of sorts today and not inspired to write anything. So I’ll take this opportunity to showcase Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2014 Presentation. Here it is in all its glory.

#mobile#VC & Technology#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. jason wright

    164 pages, and it’s raining…again.is there a search function in this presentation?

    1. Richard

      Id like to see the draft version(s) of this deck.

      1. jason wright

        me too. i’m wondering how many woman hours it took to research and compile this epic?

      2. fredwilson

        i have itmary sent me a draft over the weekendthe one she sent me to review was 202 pages

        1. Richard

          the process sometimes tells more than the product.

        2. Matt A. Myers

          That’d be interesting to see. Was it reduced in size for redundancy purposes or to keep it shorter? I’m sure the other 38 pages hold some nuggets of value.

        3. leigh

          oh i’d like to see that too πŸ™‚

        4. GCSal

          did the draft include anything on ecommerce? there was no mention of e-commerce trends specifically in the report (although thoroughly excited about the slides on ‘content, community and commerce trifecta’ trend, since those are the cornerstones of our startup).

    2. William Mougayar

      Here’s how you get Search on it. Save the PDF version, then re-open it as a PDF, not in your browser.

      1. jason wright

        thanks.

  2. Flavius Saracut

    I found very interesting the slide where they estimated the number of devices/users each new computing cycle generates(10x), and it seems that the mobile internet will generate 10 B+ across various devices.

  3. William Mougayar

    Good thing that Bitcoin, Crypto / digital currency are well represented. Maybe that will help increase awareness to the mainstream.Bitcoin wallet downloads are not the only indicator of growth. We need to also look at usage and at actual transaction value volumes, and that’s been increasing a lot.

    1. jason wright

      the price has been climbing back up recently. only a short while ago it was languishing in the $300s and now it’s at $600+

    2. awaldstein

      I believe in digital currency. They get tons of press but no awareness. The issue isn’t exposure and in my opinion this doc won’t help. The issue is understanding why the market should care.The market doesn’t care because no one has bothered to think through why they should. They won’t till this is understood.Marketing 101.

      1. William Mougayar

        Re: exposure- what I meant is this report has a lot of followers in business circles who follow these trends and look for validations from it.Are you saying that Bitcoin has a marketing problem? Maybe you could elaborate?

        1. awaldstein

          You said that it needs mainstream awareness. I disagree.It has been covered on every broadcast medium there is.Bitcoin doens’t have a marketing or awareness problem as you say, it doesn’t have a mainstream market.If you paid me to come to talk to your bitcoin company, I would only ask you one question:”why should the market care?”Answer that in palpable terms to a mass market perspective and you have your answer.I don’t think you can because it is not ready.

          1. William Mougayar

            one could have asked that same question about the internet in 1995, when it had 15 million users. things are not totally obvious, until they are evidently obvious.i agree that bitcoin isn’t ready for mainstream Usage yet, but its awareness and understanding are needed.

          2. awaldstein

            It’s a pleasure to disagree completely on this one my friend;)In 1995, the use cases for the internet was email. Nothing more was needed. It changed every business and organization forever.From the very first moment.I understand what you are saying and relying on that is what is keeping people from doing the hard work and understanding why the mass market should care. They shouldn’t as yet is my point.Marketing generally or educating the world is just like yelling into the wind in my mind. Education as marketing is just not a productive game.

          3. LE

            William:one could have asked that same question about the internet in 1995, when it had 15 million users. things are not totally obvious, until they are evidently obvious.I understand his point but agree with you.Fred (and other VC’s) have this fear which drives some of their investments. An example might be Fred’s passing on airbnb. Something that I couldn’t wrap my head around either. Otoh the error there was not being sold correctly against why you think it wouldn’t work. (I have yet to see anything that convinces me that bitcoin “will work” so it’s a bit different than Fred not listening to Paul Graham.So the fear is that something that makes no sense to you ad you will be the fool at the table.I remember my first experience with the Internet and how slow and unpractical it was. Both of us remember dial up and would have framed the possibilities by that bottleneck. [1]I remember when it came out that wine was good for your heart. I mean who would have thought that many years ago (may have been known I mean “general public” knowledge).So the fear people have is being the fool at the table and as a result they want to think that something will happen, that all the sudden bitcoin will improve your sex life or something.That said, in it’s present form, it’s a non starter to me for exactly the reasons you have mentioned.[1] I remember seeing the first quicktime video at Macworld early 90’s. Immediately recognized the potential (and so did you, right?). Otoh I remember knowing immediately that short domains would be good (and bought them) and could explain why and many people simply didn’t understand.

          4. William Mougayar

            OK. Let’s leave it at that until I punch your fingers next week πŸ™‚

          5. Jim Peterson

            “Why should the market care”A great (and true) answer to that is the holy grail for a business.

  4. Tom Labus

    I wasn’t feeling too good either after watching that washed out “interview” with Snowden.

  5. Peter Van Dijck

    If 70% of mobile revenue is “apps” (and 30% “ads”), I wonder how that breaks down? In-app advertising counted as “apps”? Facebook “Install” ads counted as app or ad?

  6. JimHirshfield

    Feel better soon.

  7. Twain Twain

    China’s Epic Share Gain is interesting because China Mobile’s Deputy GM gave a seminar last night in San Jose about the dynamics of the China market.The audience asked her if Western mobile apps companies have any chance of penetrating the market when the government has locked out the major US startups so far in favor of fostering local players.She said who the Western co can attract as a channel partner makes a difference.

    1. Richard

      Does the Chinese real estate sector operate with similar players as the US (Realtors, Brokers, etc.) ?

      1. Twain Twain

        The structure is broadly the same. The key difference is that if a Westerner wants to set up a real estate entity in China they have to go through Ministry of Economic Affairs for approval.Deloitte has a well-written 110+ page document on Real Estate investment in mainland China:* http://www.deloitte.com/ass…The issue of common law property rights is something that concerns Westerners.What I will say is that last year I was at a seminar by the former Attorney General of HK (who drafted the handover legislation) and the current Justice Secretary and the discussion was about how legal delegations from HK are going to mainland’s judiciary to explain and encourage the adoption of English common law and its property rights frameworks.Progress is slow but, then, English common law was developed over 800+ years so China shouldn’t be expected to exactly replicate it in a decade; it’s not like knock-off handbags.The Chinese framework for morals and ethics has a heritage from Confucius, Laozi, Han Feizi et al instead of Hobbes, Locke and John Stuart Mills et al. The notion and word of “chattel” doesn’t exist in the Chinese language whereas it’s been in the English language since C14th, inherited from the Norman conquest.Interestingly, in the China Mobile presentation there was an observation that Chinese startups have adopted 4 out of 5 values which are considered Western: trust, data, user community and direct communication.

  8. Richard

    Her boldest call is that for tablet market. She could have went 1 level deeper and went went into the why? Document and Video Sharing have to be 1 and 2. I’ve signed every document this year on a ipad. The tablet has been mostly a consumption product up to this point. as it becomes a production product, look out for explosive growth.

      1. pointsnfigures

        When was the last tablet rolled out with cool features? What apps are being designed for use on a tablet to make it more powerful?

        1. awaldstein

          The tablet, mostly Apple, it appears, is a ubiquitous part of every pos system everywhere, and moving back into the kitchen, the store room and the warehouse.Those systems then tie back into accounting and more.Watch out Quickbooks! This a shoehorning of software change spurred by the portability of the device itself.

          1. JamesHRH

            Touchscreen gets 5% of the run it should.I remember the first time I touched an iPhone. Perfect.You are bang on about applications, but I still think Ben is closer to right, than Mary.

    1. JasonBoisture

      Benedict Evans’ take on tablets makes more sense to me: http://ben-evans.com/benedi… His read is that tablets have sort of plateaued from their initial novelty appeal and will simply continue to eat away at desktop and laptop sales in the same way that laptops ate away at desktop sales because they fit more in that category. Smartphones are where the rich experience is now, and growth will continue there for the foreseeable future.Mary Meeker seems to be saying tablets will make hay because they grew faster than PCs ever did and they are the smallest share of any device when comparing against TVs, phones and PCs. But if, as Evans suggests, they will primarily replace PCs going forward, then their actual growth forecast remains much smaller than what Meeker is predicting.

      1. Richard

        Even if tablets only serve as a replacement product, it would be replacing the cumulative pc/laptop sales cycle, which should be demand for new plus replacement. New Tablet sales should exceed this number though, as tablets apps create a new category as well (e.g. enterprise).

    2. Frank Traylor

      Interesting Rich. I still use my tablet as only a consumption product; and as such, it has limited usefulness. I’d better get with the program!

  9. Kirsten Lambertsen

    I prescribe a gong bath, stat.

  10. leigh

    It never ceases to blow me away the extent to which Corporate spending continues to lag consumer behaviour. TV buys are going up. What the hell is with that? I find it really frustrating. It’s going to be another 5 to 10 years until CMO’s of the next generation are in charge of the budgets or at least the people in charge end up having Teenagers vs. toddlers in their homes.

    1. pointsnfigures

      The execs that approve the budget aren’t up to speed on the battle going on in the trenches. If you were a car dealer, why advertise in the paper at all? Find a way to use targeted ads on a mobile device.Corporate execs usually don’t have their pulse on the market. They are worried about managing what they have, and pleasing their boss.

      1. ErikSchwartz

        Because the newspaper ad guys call up the car dealers and ask for the sale. The mobile ad guys don’t call.

        1. leigh

          And even if they do call, they bring these gawd awful confusing techno-babble powerpoints that you need a phD and 15 yrs in digital to understand (or understand that they are FOS πŸ™‚

        2. LE

          Agree with that concept.Lost upon many raised in the internet age is the ability to have any meaningful outbound sales effort (or develop skills in this area) until the natural business that you get from a rising tide stops.

      2. leigh

        Yes and the offerings are super confusing.

    2. Salt Shaker

      Broadcast TV has seen a decline in ratings for like the past 30 years, yet they’ve been able to achieve sizable gains in annual ad revenue and CPM’s. Why? Even with sizable inroads from cable, digital, etc., the broadcast networks are still enormous reach vehicles and they are still ahead of the curve in delivering creative solutions, in-program features, promotional tie-ins, etc. to advertisers. Native advertising and rich media are still fundamentally at a nascent stage in the digital world, while banner ads are often as creative as ads that run on the back of match book covers. Additionally, programmatic buying, ad exchanges, etc., contribute to the commodization of digital media. Growth metrics are impt….but so is delivering creative solutions.

      1. leigh

        That has not been my experience (mostly US and CAN). What i’ve seen as the biggest issue is that clients aren’t exactly sure what they get outside of the traditional metrics that they are comfortable with. I’ve seen just as creative solutions on both sides and media companies are trying hard to sell video vs. TV. It’s not them. It’s the comfort levels of the clients who are singing on the dotted line of the budgets.

        1. Matt Zagaja

          Agreed. For political clients they are already used to spending money in the traditional realms. There is lots more scrutiny to try new things. Nobody got fired for buying IBM and nobody gets fired for blowing campaign budgets on direct mail or tv.

          1. Salt Shaker

            Yeah, political advertising is pretty conservative and formulaic. Obama’s use of data, digital and geo-targeting was viewed as some kind of breakthrough, while the campaign’s media strat, perhaps in hindsight, seems pretty obvious. Also, the window for political adv is gen very narrow, as are its goals/objectives. National brand advertising is more about managing a brand’s image over time, and can have a variety of diff communication objectives.

        2. Salt Shaker

          The online ad market is heavily dominated by “the big boys”–Google has a 51% share, Facebook 11% and a few other obvious brands are sprinkled within the top 10. Twitter has a 1% share. If an agency buyer is looking to make a buy for a news, finance, sports, entertainment or healthcare product, for example, at first blush they’ll run a ranker looking at UV’s, page views, demos, engagement metrics, etc. The plain truth is if your site doesn’t rank within the top 5 or so within a targeted category, your site is dead in the water, or at the very least will have an arduous battle for monetization. Ad buyers (and their clients) only buy so deep, which is why innovative, creative solutions will only grow in importance as a discriminator and potential neutralizer against inferior metrics.

  11. pointsnfigures

    I looked at this yesterday. I almost wish she would focus. Sometimes when there is a massive slide deck, I think the person just wants to show how smart they are. There are some great points in here. If you are an avid reader of Benedict Evans blog, they are not too surprising.The slide that jumped out at me was the digital meets personal trend. First time I have seen that in a VC deck. Most of the time, they just talk about software. But, now software is driving personal physical interaction in a new way.Maybe there is hope for Foursquare/Swarm in their recent pivot?<edit> I was wrong. Meeker didn’t have this in her deck. It was here:”We need to win at the intersection of physical & digital” @Walmart CEO Doug McMillon #CodeCon pic.twitter.com/D50qMQiu1dβ€” Steve Case (@SteveCase) May 28, 2014<script async=”” src=”//platform.twitter.com/widget…” charset=”utf-8″></script>

    1. awaldstein

      which slide is that?

      1. pointsnfigures

        Uff da. Can’t remember but it had to do with interfaces like Tinder-where you meet people virtually, but then meet in real life. There seems to be increasing demand for this kind of connection.

    2. fredwilson

      i think so. the early data on swarm is very encouraging

    3. LE

      Sometimes when there is a massive slide deck, I think the person just wants to show how smart they are.For sure that is one reason. But I’ve gone into meetings and flattened people by simply overwhelming them with information [1] which they came ill prepared to dispute. And, well, people are lazy and don’t even know the questions to ask anyway. And don’t want to appear stupid if they don’t understand something. (All behavioral issues that for some reason many people don’t intuitively understand.)Other dynamic (there are many) is that if something is long people, in their brain, go “check ok they have their shit together”.My mom recently got a bound investment proposal from a firm that fit that pattern. If you actually read it you saw there was quite a bit of needless filler.[1] Remembering also back when I sold my first business the 3 inch thick computer printout of all the inventory (purposely made super verbose) that the buyers were in no way prepared to even begin to dispute. So they went with it after exhausting themselves trying to find any errors.

    4. vruz

      1) She doesn’t have to prove anything about herself, and she isn’t doing that.Global trends are complex and if you have a strong opinion of where things are going you have to back those opinions with a lot of data.A blog is one medium for a wider public, this is a presentation for a more specific public who ask different questions.2) Swarm is brilliant. Hope they succeed.

  12. ErikSchwartz

    164 slides? Did she not have the time to put together a shorter deck?

    1. LE

      Everyone knows that even though the longer you make a document the more you give people the ability to pick things apart, the length also makes it less likely that people will take the time to deeply consider all of data presented or take issue with anything but a handful of points. People have short attention spans. (I don’t need a slide to know that fact is now more than ever before either..)This is all just pr anyway. Why is KPCB, a VC, in the business of helping anyone other than themselves unless of course they are using this information prior to it’s public release an hope to enhance their investments by having these things become afait accompli. Change what other investors do. Or hold a conference.I seriously wonder the actual value to any information in that format and that length without serious vetting.The saying about advertising (John Wanamaker) about “I know 50% of my advertising works I just don’t know which 50%” applies here.Has Meeker ever been objectively rated on her past predictions or data integrity presented as far as helpfulness to anyone making a decision? Or if the data methodology is even correct? [1]Plus people would seem to focus in on (investing wise) simply confirming what they already are thinking (rationalizing) by reading things like this:”81% of high school freshman graduated in 2012 vs. 74% 5 years ago”.Actionable? In what way? Entertaining? I’d rather watch Dexter.As an example, I’ve attached a slide about healthcare.Wow, amazing the source for this slide (picked literally randomly) are, in part, two people from KPCB (and others) and we don’t even know the facts on the page that they were the source for!! (I think I made a similar comment last year as well..)Where is the [N] to show you who is saying what?[1] This is what I call the “white man” problem. White men are always so sure of something (you know like the MH370 pinger locater or almost daily medical journal articles it seems) until other white men disprove their authority later in time.

      1. sigmaalgebra

        You just GOTTA ‘get with the flow’ here. You seem confused, like the Wilson’s Bar and Grill social scene is really actually about solid information. I used to make that mistake! It’s a nerdish, socially awkward, social faux pas of the first order and magnitude and rarely forgiven! I mean, just what do you want us to do here after our fourth beers? Can get a lot of contempt for that faux pas! Instead, it’s just ‘light, entertaining, social small talk’! So, get ‘with the flow’ and join everyone, stand, and clap for Mary Meeker and, this year, once again, her wondrous accomplishment so selflessly and graciously given to the business community by public spirited KPCB!Yes, on the way out, you are fully welcome, no faux pas, to toss the tchotchkes and swag in the nearest dumpster! It’s all part of Socialization 101! Nerds have to learn this stuff the hard way!

  13. Salt Shaker

    FB’s annualized ARPU is significantly greater than Twitter’s, but the latter’s year-over-year growth rate is significantly higher (80% vs. 57%). FB had a big head start monetizing mobile, while Twitter’s stock price declined from serous market overreaction to lock-up expiration. I’m long on Twitter (and I’m no analyst).Also, I believe tablet sales would have been significantly higher had Apple not experienced 4Q supply chain problems on its retina mini, which depressed holiday sales.

    1. fredwilson

      me too

  14. William Mougayar

    “Fastest growing segment of valuable data comes from Internet of Things (IoT) –billions of sensors / intelligence systems capturing / sending data, increasingly in real-time…”This is an interesting point and it ties back to your recent post on the IoT and linkage cloud-based services like machine learning, and computation. The cloud makes smart things even smarter.

  15. Michael Frank

    2 reactions:1) The thing I wanted in the Appendix when I read this yesterday was a few slides showing the trends she had identified the last few years and explaining which have developed and which haven’t. 2) Reading this every year is a treat and former top equity analysts with tech understandings often have extremely thoughtful perspectives on the industry. (Henry Blodget generally produces a few decks a year that are similarly fun / interesting to read and Bill Gurley’s writing is often quite good as well.)

  16. Vitor Conceicao

    Something caught my attention and got me thinking: In the Mobile App part of the presentation she is defending the trend of mobile apps becoming specialized for doing one thing well (just like Fred defended here at AVC a few of weeks ago), but on the part about China, when she talks about China being an innovator in mobile commerce she used the Tencent WeChat example which is a bundled app with a lot of different functions on the same app.It looks like they started with a Messenger/Chat App and used it as a leverage to launch other services and are having tremendous success with it.A couple of weeks ago Wired published a story about Yahoos strategy of buying mobile companies to shut them down because they are apparently working on a bundled app strategy.We all know that Yahoo has a sizeable stake in Ali Baba and with it information on the Chinese market.Adding 2+2 could it be that Marissa Meyer is onto something?Food for thought.

  17. Matt Zagaja

    Slide 13 on Internet ad spending stood out to me because of a previous comment Fred made about online news sites and paying for content with ads. I hear all these stories (most recently regarding Metafilter) about sites that were relying on ad revenue that failed, and it kind of gives you this doom and gloom sense that maybe ad revenue can’t support content. Advertisers and facebook page owners complain about less click throughs or reach, but Meeker’s data seems to suggest that there is plenty of (and increasingly more) ad money to go around to support content, but maybe more content creators to compete against.

  18. guest

    Could someone please explain what is MM and what is Y/Y? Thanks.

  19. Donna Brewington White

    The one good thing about feeling down is that when you feel better it is like a new lease on life. After spending practically three days in bed, I just joined a gym! Hope you are sorted out soon.

    1. fredwilson

      i’m feeling better todayjoanne says it is allergiesbut i think it was something like a bug

  20. paramendra

    A bad first paragraph. Pretty rare for AVC.com. πŸ™‚

  21. pointsnfigures

    She is smart-no doubt. I meant in general when I see long slide decks-the presenter might be trying to overwhelm the audience.

  22. LE

    Well we don’t know if, say, the SCOTUS law clerks actually did the heavy lifting on this, do we?Or maybe some congressional aides?Or the guy who wrote the speech for Kennedy that everyone loves (and that Johnson appeared bored at oddly enough..)Point being that we don’t know that Meeker toiled on this by burning the midnight oil or if she is just a figurehead.Stuff like this, typical media hyperbole, really gets me:http://qz.com/214307/mary-m…Mary Meeker, legendary Morgan Stanley internet analyst and current…I know the world thinks she is a big deal. She very well may be a big deal. I just have nothing that appears concrete enough other than people saying she is a big deal.