- What tech companies are the biggest
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- How ad dollars are shifting
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- Why messaging isu00a0king
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- The rise of video, on-demand, and drones
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- The explosion of content creation
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- And how tech is changing the economy
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Getting the other 5 billion people online has become a huge philanthropic and business opportunity. Facebooku2019s Internet.org and Googleu2019s Project Loon aim to open the door to connectivity for the people of the developing world through subsidized access in hopes that theyu2019ll be come loyal users.
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The list of top Internet companies is dominated by platforms where third-party developers and merchants bolster value and network effect. Apple and Googleu2019s mobile app stores, Alibaba and Amazonu2019s commerce marketplaces, and Facebook and Tencentu2019s socially connected app ecosystems adapt their flexible core platforms to a wide array of use cases.
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The Internet has already transformed the consumer and business space, where entrepreneurs can build products that meet their needs or solve pain points. Larger, more regulated spaces that are less accessible or comprehensible to the average entrepreneur have seen less Internet-driven innovation, and are essentially sitting ducks for startups.
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India, Brazil, and China are leading the smartphone growth. Mobile-first content and apps built for these rapidly developing markets will likely become big businesses. Startups that work in the US may need to expand quickly to these markets when possible, or face entrenched local competition.
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We now spend more time on mobile devices than desktops and laptops. The shift from using the Internet a few times a day for long sessions to many times a day for short sessions will have profound impact on what we consume. Bite-sized content and experiences are becoming favorable.
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Americans spend 24% of their time on mobile, but the medium only sees 8% of ad spend. As this balances out, businesses that build places to host mobile ads could absorb massive revenue.
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Vertical video ads like Snapchatu2019s are watched in their entirety 9X more than landscape video ads. That means video content and ad creators need to rethink how they shoot, including fewer long-distance establishing shots and more personal close-ups.
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Email to Slack, cash registers to Square, paper files and insurance brokers to Zenefits, manual background checks to Checkru2019s API. Enterprise is about reinventing a process, not speeding up how it used to work.
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The top apps by usage and number of sessions per day are messaging apps. These apps are where people spend the most of their time on mobile, making them a potential jumping off point for additional services like ecommerce and media consumption.
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Apps that break away to become 100 million user-plus networks can enjoy sustained success, as it becomes tougher to convince people to try a similar service their friends arenu2019t already on.
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WeChat and Line pioneered many features now coming to apps like Facebook Messenger and Snapchat, including video calls, payments, stickers, and media. More opportunities theyu2019ve proven out exist in commerce, food delivery, taxi services, and development platforms.
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Year-over-year, Pinterest pin creation is up 75%, Twitch video broadcasts are up 83% to over 11 million per month, stories written on Wattpad are up 140%, and Airbnb reviews are up 140%. 65% of Snapchatu2019s 100 million daily users create content per day. Content platforms have a lot to gain from strong creation tools.
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American youths age 12 to 24 used less Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn versus last year, while growing their Snapchat and Instagram usage. Only 14% of teens now say Facebook is the most important social network, down from 33% in Spring 2013, while Snapchat has risen to the top for 13% of youths.
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Taxis, hot meals, cooking ingredients, groceries, courier delivery, and postage pickup are all available on-demand. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses will be disrupted if they canu2019t find a way to compete with convenience.
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The 167% year-over-year increase in consumer drone sales shows lots of hobbyists, photographers, and videographers are getting into the flying gadgets. But top drone companies like DJI and Airware are building out drone systems that can save commercial businesses tons of money by replacing helicopters, planes, satellites, and dangerous human jobs.
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The generation that grew up connected to the Internet has now reached the point that it is about ready to drive the economy. Among the things they value most, Meeker says, are flexible work hours, and cash bonuses, though they still value training and development highest. Those first two should sound a little familiar: most of the on-demand services in the world are popular among workers for that reason.
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Not everyone is using marketplace services as a full-time job. Many use services like Airbnb to supplement their income or pay their mortgage. The flexibility of these services allows people to make money on their terms without having to jump through the hoops of a full-time job, and the actual amount of money they make is not often that small. A typical Airbnb host in NYC earns $7,700 annually, Meeker says, while an average Etsy seller earns $1,400.
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With technology innovation rapidly outpacing governmental regulation, there have been flare-ups around the country and world regarding the status of marketplace and on-demand service companies like Airbnb and Uber. But the same was true for Stubhub, a marketplace that “has helped regulators effectively regulate what they had intended to regulate all along.”
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Now one of the most valuable startups in the world, Xiaomi has gone from a relatively unknown technology company to one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. After taking over a huge chunk of the Chinese market, the company’s turned its sights to new ones like India.
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Mobile traffic makes up 65% of total Internet usage in India. So it’s not surprising that large companies like Google and Xiaomi are making huge efforts to create cheaper smartphones that will attract buyers whose first experience on the Internet is on a smartphone.
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Despite all this talk of “unicorns” and a growing bubble, public and private financing of technology companies is still only around two thirds of what it was in the dot com bust. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ has hit the same levels of that era, and only around $32 billion has been invested thus far in 2015.
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