Mary Meeker’s technology trends presentations are always worth examining, and her new one, KPCB Internet Trends 2013, is no exception.
I’d like to draw out several key points, based on my current work on higher education:
- TV-watching is huge for Americans (slide 5). We spend more time on it than on print, radio, the internet, and mobile devices. It takes up almost half of our media experience. Interestingly, this isn’t true in China, where mobile devices lead media use (slide 68). How can colleges and universities apply this information? Perhaps understanding tv culture more deeply is a way to grapple with different generations of students and staff. And school reaching out to China need to focus on mobile.
- Android’s worldwide share of mobile has ballooned, significantly outpacing iOS’s, and far beyond others (Microsoft, RIM, Symbian look tiny) (slide 7). Samsung is the world’s leading smartphone maker in terms of market share (slide 32). Perhaps educators should shift development resources towards Android platforms. Given Google’s focus on the Web, schools should also remember to publish content there.
- Facebook owns photo sharing (slide 14). Flickr and Snapchat barely make an appearance. Meeker doesn’t notice Google/Picasa. Maybe this is a major venue for teaching visual literacy, not to mention sharing campus visual documents.
- Podcasting is weirdly invisible despite discussions of audio (slides 21-22). We need to spend more effort educating people about this vibrant form.
- While many Americans (especially educators) fret about sharing information online, please know that we don’t do a lot of this, as seen in the global context (slide 28):
- The proportion of internet users who rely on mobile devices to get online keeps growing (slide 32). Indeed, Chinese users prefer phones to PCs for internet access (slide 33), offering one glimpse of the future. Campuses need to think hard about mobile strategies; see point 2, above.
- We’re seeing rapid development in mobile, connected devices beyond laptops and phones (slides 51ff).
- Meeker offers a disruption to education argument (slides 98-101), seeing online education as both growing and democratizing.
Once again, a very useful stack. What did you take away from it?
You’ve inspired me to look it over — bookmarked for bedtime reading. One of our contributors earlier this week argued for a trend to be inferred within the data on slide 6 — that most of the biggest internet properties are sites that rely on user-generated content. Users do the work that is converted into information sold back to us. His point was that we see something similar with MOOCs.
Robert
Quite true, Robert. User-generated content drives an awful lot of the internet.
Notice how Amazon has gone into the publishing business?
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I thought the chart showing Americans sharing only 15% online to be very provocative in light of breaking news that the NSA is sucking up everything Americans share online and storing it in big underground bunkers–or whatever. I think that 15% reflects that the American world is not as wired as all the wired folk want to believe, AND it reflects the cautious, conservative nature of millions of Americans who still go to the church social for their social media.
On the other hand, I am very curious about the data collected in the high ranking countries. Was it an online survey? I can think of three ways to skew that data counting on my left hand…
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