Mary Meeker 2018 Internet Trends Report

Finally got around to reading the 2018 report which was good reading like always. The headline in the news was that internet penetration has now reached ~50% globally and mobile growth is stagnating (0% growth in new smartphone shipments). However, what was most interesting to me was the focus on China. Today the US has 11 of top internet companies by market value while China has 9!

It will be interesting to see how that list looks like in the next 5 years but my guess China will take > 50% of the top 20 and you will see at least 2 China companies in top 5 (US still takes all top 5 spots with AAPL, AMZN, MSFT, GOOG, FB).

Some points on China:

1. Government is very supportive of collecting user data and sharing this data. Users are also less wary and more open to it if they get a benefit.
2. Portals are very feature rich (ranges from news, to social to payments) leading to centralized services. For mobile payments which is growing at a ridiculous pace (reaching ~16 trillion in 2017), Alipay controls 54%, Wechat controls 38% and only 8% falls in other.
3. China's Mobile Data usage grew at 162%. Mobile Video was fastest growing segment (short form video similar to vine)
4. Innovation is spreading from online to offline shopping. My guess is similar to how Amazon is spreading to groceries via Whole Food purchase, you will see someone like BABA/Tencent dominate the retail experience in China.