Mary Meeker today shared her annual Internet Trends Report at Recode’s Code Conference in California. The report serves as a great tool to analyze some of the year’s most notable trends, and this year is no different…
First and foremost, Meeker highlights stagnant smartphone growth, with her data showing that smartphone unit shipments didn’t grow at all during 2017. Furthermore, Internet usage growth also slowed dramatically, with only a 7 percent increase in 2017 compared to the 12 percent increase in the year before.
As for the classic iOS vs Android debate, Android continues to dominate in terms of shipments, locking in around 1.25 billion shipments during 2017. Meanwhile, iOS accounted for less than half a billion shipments. Those numbers are stable compared to 2016.
In terms of average selling price of smartphones, Meeker’s data shows a decline despite the introduction of the more expensive iPhone X and other high-end Android phones. This in large part is due to a rise in more affordable Chinese smartphone manufacturers.
In terms of apps, Meeker highlights the growing dominance of messaging applications. According to the report, WhatsApp sit atop as the most popular messaging service with 1.5 billion monthly active users, followed closely by Facebook Messenger at 1.25 billion.
The Internet Trends report also highlights the “Top 20 Worldwide Internet Leaders” five years ago, as well as this year. Apple sits atop both lists, with a $418 billion market cap five years ago and a $924 billion market cap as of this month. However, what’s most notable is that there were just two Chinese companies on the top 20 list five years, and now there are nine.
Mary Meeker’s full 2018 Internet Trends report can be viewed here.
