Mary Meeker has this month delivered her annual – and much anticipated – digital trends report. It is a mammoth 333 page document which reflects on tech trends from internet use to e-commerce sales, photo-sharing and interactive gaming. Here are some key points from this year’s report:
- The US no longer monopolises tech’s top table
Technology companies such as Microsoft have for some time been among the world’s largest companies. Today all but three in the top ten (by market cap) are tech firms.
But they are increasingly global. The USA still dominates, but Chinese, Japanese and Australian firms have overtaken US mainstays such as eBay, EA and Twitter. It would not come as a surprise if the likes of Alibaba, Tencent and Shopify make a move into other markets.
- Data scarcity puts pressure on programmatic
Privacy concerns continue to mount. In the last year, GDPR has come in to force in Europe and similar legislation has been passed in California.
Even Facebook has called for regulation stating “it shouldn’t be for private companies, however big or small, to come up with those rules”. Meeker points to the growth of encrypted digital media communication – now accounting for 87% of traffic, up from 53% in just two years – driven by ‘dark social’ services such as iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram.
Such data scarcity creates challenges for advertisers as people become more protective of their data.
- Super Apps point to growth in China
One nation not driving towards data protection is the largest online population in the world, the Chinese. Internet usage, by data consumption, grew 189% in the last year, and China is set to become the largest producer of data next year.
Multiple-feature “Super Apps” are commonplace. For example Meituan, originally a group-buying app, has over 30 features from restaurant reviews and reservations, home rentals, travel booking to groceries.
Why use Yelp, OpenTable, Skyscanner, Trivago and Ocado when you can get all those services in one place, and on one bill? The west may follow, with Airbnb offering experiences, Facebook entering the payment world and YouTube making its debut as a subscription streaming service, perhaps.
This consolidation of data and services into single super apps suggest that China’s already massive tech sector and ad market only has room to grow.
