It’s that time of the year when Mary Meeker graces us with her annual slide deck (which weighs in at over 100+ slides) about internet trends by releasing it on the internets. Queen Mary has been churning out this “McKinsey-esque” report since 2011, so really it’s just been 3 years. I read the 2012 report and came away thinking…duh, no shit.
What really got me in the 2012 report was the image on the left about Indian internet usage between mobile and desktop. I call bullshit, this graph looks too perfect to be real. But, once the report was released everyone was talking about this graph as if it was the gospel about mobile internet usage in India.
Sorry, if I misled you with the title but please stop reading if you are expecting a full de-brief on the slide deck. I’m sure our friends over at TechCrunch have already written up a full de-brief and tweeted the hell out of it.
For me these reports are just empty calories. You might think you sound smart when you can tell someone “according to the 2013 Meeker report, mobile payments will be hugh.” Or better yet, you randomly throw some nuggets from the slide deck into a conversation at a dinner party and suddenly you are looked upon as some super genius on all things internet, mobile, local, social and payments related.
What is smart is if you invested in a mapping company 2 years back to take advantage of the local scene. Or, you started a mobile payment company 4 years back when people were still trying to figure out what the fuck Twitter was all about. Or, you are working on some new battery technology that will make gadgets last 10x longer and 1/10 the size…that’s uber smart.
Of course, that won’t stop VC associates from around the world to devour the slide deck for breakfast. So that by lunch time they can start the due diligence process in order to have term sheets ready by dinner for new startups to fund.
Startups are also analyzing the slide deck so they can breath easy knowing what they are slaving over 80 hours a week is one of the identified trends by Queen Mary.
If her 2013 report is anything like her 2012 report, I can loosely guess what it contains:
- Mobile is massive – Countries like India and China are just scratching the surface. The 2 countries combined have 2.6 billion people do the math…it’s big.
- Social is hugh – Of course, if you have a ton of mobile phone users they will want to communicate with each other
- Internet usage up – Yup, as more people buy phones they will access the internet
If you have some calories to spare and want to sound smart at your next dinner party then please visit the 2013 Internet Trends by Queen Mary. But remember I warned you because the internet, mobile, local, social and payments space is massive, big and huge for 2013.
celestri - virtual home of manish jain 