Every year, digital strategists are keenly attuned to the release of Mary Meeker’s internet trends reports. The 2017 report was issued May 31, and we’ve taken some time to give it, at least, an initial analysis. The full report weighs in at 355 slides, and can be found here on the Kleiner Perkins site.
A few of the trends we noted:
- Smartphone growth is slowing – only 3% this year. This is a continuation of a trend reported last year which also included slowing Internet growth, as both of these become widely globally adopted. India is notably breaking the latter trend, with double digit growth in Internet users in 2016 and plenty of room to grow more.
- What new channel is growing? Voice. About 20% of searches were made via voice last year! (Recognition accuracy, at 95%, is probably getting close to the point where it rivals that of mere mortals making spelling errors or victimized by autocorrect.)
- TV viewership continues to decline – but Internet video is doing fine. Netflix commanded 30% of US home entertainment revenue last year.
- Games and gamification are still big news and big growth areas, globally.
- In the healthcare space, consumers are becoming more willing to share data and wider adoption of wearables.
We’ll be discussing some specifics from the report with our clients in the near term, and how it relates to their lines of business and existing digital campaigns.