Ten Internet Trends Worth Knowing

Ten internet trends worth knowing.

• There are 513 million internet users in China.  215 million of them were added since 2008.  Total population penetration is 38%.  By contrast, the United States has 245 million users but only 15 million were added since 2008.  Penetration is 79% of the population.
• There are 121 million internet users in India.  Over half have been added since 2008.  However, only 10% of the population is using the internet.  There is a lot of potential in India.
• There are 208 million 3G mobile phone subscibers in the United States equal to 64% of the population.  Japan has the next highest total at 122 million subscribers but that is a 95% penetration rate.  South Korea is at 85% penetration, Portugal at 78%, Australia at 76% and Sweden at 73%.  On the other hand, China is at 6%, India at 4% and Russia at 8%.
• Almost 70 million iPads were sold in the first 2 years after launch.  By comparison, only 20 million iPhones and about 1 million iPods were sold in their first 8 quarters on the market.
• Android phones have outsold iPhones globally by a factor of 4x in their first 13 quarters after launch.
• There are 953 million smartphones in use in the world compared to 6.1 billion mobile phones.  Smartphones still have a huge upside in the world, particularly in China and India.  The higher cost of the equipment is the biggest obstacle for growth in these countries.
• 29% of U.S. adults own a tablet or eReader, up from 2% 3 years ago.
• 10% of internet traffic is now over mobile devices.  Only 1% of internet traffic was on mobile devices as recently as December, 2009.
• 7% of people's media time is spent on print but 25% of current ad dollars go to print.  Conversely, 10% of people's media time is spent on mobile but only 1% of ad spend is directed at mobile.  This is huge opportunity.
• In 1994 there were about 800 million landline telephone lines in the world and less than 100,000 mobile phones.  In 2009, there were 4.7 billion mobile subscribers globally and about 1.2 billion landlines.  Landlines peaked at 1.3 billion in 2006.

All of these factoids are included in an excellent presentation prepared by Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

The world is changing at an accelerating pace.  Meeker documents it as well as anyone can.  The entire presentation is 110 slides but is well worth your time.  You should definitely look at her slides on how the internet is resulting in the re-imagination of almost everything. (Slides 33-84).