This is the final post in a series examining Mary Meeker’s annual Internet trends report.
Media companies looking to distribute their content widely are discovering that a truly global audience is out there, waiting to read, listen and watch. Outlets no longer need to focus their efforts solely on a particular city, state or country — thanks to the Internet, they can target global audiences from wherever they are.
And there’s room for audience growth. While the Internet has been a mainstay in the lives of many for more than two decades now, there are still some corners of the globe where its influence is still growing. Try as it might, the Internet still hasn’t fully saturated the market.
Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and leading expert on Internet trends, recently explored in her annual report the finer points of where the Internet is firmly ensconced, where it is still growing and what new developments we can expect in the years to come.
Below are a few of the most notable trends on the Internet today:
Global use still growing
The Internet has come a long in the past 20 years, whereas it previously had less than 100 million total users worldwide. KPCB found that the total number of people online is steadily increasing — it crossed the 2 billion mark to 2.2 billion in 2011, then 2.4 in 2012 and 2.6 in 2013.
Gap between haves and have-nots
Though the Internet is used almost everywhere in the world, usage is still largely dominated by 15 prominent countries. China leads the world in total Internet users at 618 million, followed by the United States at 263 million and Japan and Brazil flagging behind at 101 and 100 million respectively. The world’s top 15 online countries have seen a 58 percent rate of penetration, compared to an overall global rate of 37 percent.
Plenty of upside ahead
While the Internet is reaching the point of saturation in many developed nations, there are some pockets of the world in which there’s still a great deal of upside. For example, KPCB reported that the number of users grew 27 percent in India between 2012 and 2013, and 27 percent in the Philippines.
Smartphone growth slowing
Users are increasingly accessing the Internet via their mobile devices — but we may soon see a saturation point in that market as well. KPCB pointed out that the growth in subscriptions in the United States is expected to drop from 21 percent in 2013 to 12 percent this year, while two other world leaders — Japan and Korea — are anticipating just 5 percent growth.