“The mobile revolution is still in its infancy and poised for tremendous growth,” according to Mary Meeker, who recently delivered a presentation about current Internet trends at the Web 2.0 Summit.
Mobile is already becoming the major source of traffic for some large sites, including Pandora (60% of traffic comes from mobile) and Twitter (55% from mobile). Just one-third of Facebook‘s traffic currently comes from mobile, but that number is expected to increase dramatically.
Other highlights from the presentation:
- mobile search on Google has grown 4-fold from 2007-2011
- mobile commerce is on the rise, with mobile sales in the billions for eBay, PayPal and Amazon
- mobile payment service Square has topped $1 billion in gross mobile sales
- a comScore study of smartphone users showed that of those who abandoned in-store purchases, 52% did so because they found the product online for a better price
- smartphones and tablets outshipped PCs (notebooks and desktop computers) in Q4 of 2010
Meeker also focused on how mobile apps are ‘rejuvenating’ local commerce. These apps include coupons and demand generation through sites like Groupon and Living Social, mobile payments through Square and OpenTable, reviews and business info available via mobile such as Google places and Yelp, and geo-location through Foursquare, Facebook Places, etc.
What does the future hold for mobile? 85% of world’s population is already covered by commercial wireless signals, while only 80% is covered by the electrical grid. In India, more than 200 million farmers are receiving government payments/subsidies via mobile. How will the increased use of mobile change the way business and banking are conducted, not just in the US but especially in areas where computers (and/or electricity) are hard to come by for much of the population?
View the full presentation here:
KPCB Internet Trends (2011)
