5.2 bn active mobile subscribers worldwide, but only 40% have smartphones. Given the apparent ubiquity of smartphones in India and China, this was surprising to me.
This is a fairly significant opportunity. Even if you were to assume mobile penetration ends today, there are still 1.5x as many new smartphone users that will come on to the market over the next decade.
Each additional smartphone user however will have decreasing disposable income because this is what prevented them from acquiring the device sooner in the first place. This means that they'll also be nearly impossible to monetize as customers for a very long time.
The moonshot ISP plays Google and Facebook are making in poorer parts of the world make a lot of sense viewed through this lens. Neither of them have any need to make money of these users immediately. But capturing these users and waiting for their disposable incomes to grow could prove to be a valuable strategy in the long term.
2. Kakaotalk and other messaging platforms
Kakaotalk has 48 mn MAUs, flat year-on-year user growth, and generates $853 mn in revenue / year.
The messaging app with next highest rates of engagement? WhatsApp with 800 mn MAU and 60% year-on-year user growth. That $19 bn USD play Facebook made looks like a bargain.
3. E-Commerce makes up only 9% of retail sales in the United States.
Next time you sneer at yet another e-commerce company launching, remember this metric. The majority of retail transactions can be carried out over the internet. Niche-specific e-commerce platforms simply have to figure out how to sufficiently lower the transaction friction. Some of this ground will be captured by incumbents, but there's a lot of room for startups.
4. Mobile device management = critical in preventing breaches
Enterprise grade MDM turns out be relatively difficult to implement on off-the-shelf consumer mobile devices with any amount of stability or reliability. There's room for someone to step in and offer custom mobile devices for enterprise (good thing we're already working on this and am happy to chat about it if you're curious)
Mod request: Would it make more sense to change the URL and point it to the report itself? Direct URL from KPCB here:
1. Global mobile penetration:
5.2 bn active mobile subscribers worldwide, but only 40% have smartphones. Given the apparent ubiquity of smartphones in India and China, this was surprising to me.
This is a fairly significant opportunity. Even if you were to assume mobile penetration ends today, there are still 1.5x as many new smartphone users that will come on to the market over the next decade.
Each additional smartphone user however will have decreasing disposable income because this is what prevented them from acquiring the device sooner in the first place. This means that they'll also be nearly impossible to monetize as customers for a very long time.
The moonshot ISP plays Google and Facebook are making in poorer parts of the world make a lot of sense viewed through this lens. Neither of them have any need to make money of these users immediately. But capturing these users and waiting for their disposable incomes to grow could prove to be a valuable strategy in the long term.
2. Kakaotalk and other messaging platforms
Kakaotalk has 48 mn MAUs, flat year-on-year user growth, and generates $853 mn in revenue / year.
The messaging app with next highest rates of engagement? WhatsApp with 800 mn MAU and 60% year-on-year user growth. That $19 bn USD play Facebook made looks like a bargain.
3. E-Commerce makes up only 9% of retail sales in the United States.
Next time you sneer at yet another e-commerce company launching, remember this metric. The majority of retail transactions can be carried out over the internet. Niche-specific e-commerce platforms simply have to figure out how to sufficiently lower the transaction friction. Some of this ground will be captured by incumbents, but there's a lot of room for startups.
4. Mobile device management = critical in preventing breaches
Enterprise grade MDM turns out be relatively difficult to implement on off-the-shelf consumer mobile devices with any amount of stability or reliability. There's room for someone to step in and offer custom mobile devices for enterprise (good thing we're already working on this and am happy to chat about it if you're curious)
Mod request: Would it make more sense to change the URL and point it to the report itself? Direct URL from KPCB here:
http://kpcbweb2.s3.amazonaws.com/files/90/Internet_Trends_20...