India, not China, adding most Internet users: highlights of Mary Meeker's State of the Internet report

Thursday May 28, 2015 , 4 min Read

Mary Meeker unveiled her 197 slide annual State of the Internet 2015 report at Re/Code’s Code conference. Internet, the dominant force of our lifetime is growing its users base, there are 2.8 billion internet users globally (39%). According to Meeker’s report Internet users grew by 8% in 2014, down from 10% in 2013 and 11% in 2012. It’s a solid growth but its slowing, net new-user additions have remained flat at about 200 million from 2012 to 2014.

According to Meeker, India is the top country that adds more new internet users. In 2014 alone India added 63MM+ new internet users. Currently India has 232 Million internet users growing +37% y-o-y. 65% of India’s internet traffic comes from Mobile.

Indian internet market constitutes a rank of no.1 or no.1 position for global internet leaders. For Facebook & LinkedIn India is the 2nd largest market. Whatsapp and YouTube have an audience of 10% and 7% their user base respectively. In India 41% of all ecommerce come from mobile. Alibaba-backed Paytm has emerged as is the mobile wallet leader. Local messaging app Hike is in top ten most used android apps in India, Whatsapp and Facebook are No1. and No2.

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Meeker compares the India's Internet penetration of 2014 with China’s in 2008 and the U.S. of 1996. If the same growth patter were to be repeated, the next half decade will be an exciting times in India internet story. We are waiting to see the catalyst of the internet revolution in India.

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Here is the full presentation of Mary Meeker:

2015 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Mobile + Video

As the landscape of the web is being transformed, everything is getting optimized for mobile. Even the videos we are obsessed with are optimized for mobile to satisfy our urge for instant gratification. Watching video in 2015 accounted for 29% of our total time spent on screens. The rest 71% of our time spent is split between on desktops, televisions, and other connected devices. Video constituted 64 percent of Internet traffic and 55 percent of mobile traffic in 2014. Also Meeker highlights, smartphone adoption is slowing down; from 27 percent in 2013 growth we are down to 23 percent growth in 2014.

Ad format: Optimized for mobile, often fast, interactive, fun, video. Buy buttons are optimized for mobile to minimize the friction. Mobile time spent is high, in fact millennial never part with their smartphones – so where time is spent the most, advertisers spend their money.

Mery Meeker_India_State_of_the_Internet-YourStory(10) — Ad format

Mery Meeker_India_State_of_the_Internet-YourStory — Young people and their phones

A new form factors that emerged in video is, a vertical format. It could be attributed to the rise of SnapChat, more and more people are looking at vertical videos. Facebook serves 4b video view, and SnapChat has 2 billion vertical views a day.

Messaging eating the world

According to Meeker, six of the top 10 mobile apps globally are messaging apps. By the looks of it messaging apps could evolve into hubs of communications and commerce. Currently messaging platforms started to used for payments, games, ride-hailing. Asian messaging platforms like WeChat, Line and KakaoTalk are paving the way. In emerging market, new users are getting introduced and on-boareded to the internet via messaging apps. (People buying phones, asking the seller I want a phone with WhatsApp.) Messaging are becoming a gateway to the internet.

Drones are flying off

The drone sector is on the buzzing: The industry for consumer drones is expected to jump 167% in 2015 and the revenue from consumer drone will fly up to $1.7 billion this year. Meeker predicted that 4.3 million consumer drones will be shipped in 2015. As drone shipments are taking off heavily VC funded DJI is leading the way.

Two things at the end: