TECH CRUNCH – June 5 – Legendary venture capitalist Mary Meeker has just released the 2018 version of her famous Internet Trends report. As of 2018, half the world population, or ~3.6B people, will be on the Internet.
- Mobile usage: U.S. adults are spending more time online thanks to mobile, clocking 5.9h per day in 2017 vs 5.6h in 2016.
- Mobile ads: $7B mobile ad opportunity.
- Crypto: Coinbase's user count has nearly quadrupled since January 2017.
- Voice: Voice technology is at an inflection point due to speech recognition hitting 95% accuracy and the sales explosion for Amazon Echo which went from ~10M to 30M sold in total by the end of 2017.
- Tech investment: We're at an all-time high for public and private investment in technology.
- Ecommerce vs Brick & Mortar: Ecommerce growth quickens as now 13% of all retail purchases happen online.
- Amazon: More people start product searches on Amazon than search engines now.
- Subscription services: They're seeing massive adoption, with Netflix up 25%, The New York Times up 43%, and Spotify up 48% YOY in 2017.
- Education: Employees seek retraining and education from YouTube and online courses to keep up with new job requirements and pay off skyrocketing student loan debt.
- Freelancing: The on-demand workforce grew 23% in 2017 driven by Uber, Airbnb, Etsy, Upwork, and Doordash.
- Transportation: People are buying fewer cars, shifting transportation spend to rideshare, which saw rides double in 2017.
- Enterprise: Consumerization of the enterprise through better interfaces is spurring growth for companies like Dropbox and Slack.
- China: Alibaba is expanding beyond China with strong gross merchandise volume, though Amazon still rules in revenue.
- Privacy: China has a big opportunity as users there are much more willing to trade their personal data for product benefits than U.S. users.
- Immigration: 56% of top U.S. companies were founded by a first- or second-generation immigrant.
