Internet Boom Times Are Over, Says Mary Meeker’s Influential Report

Growth of Internet users worldwide is essentially flat, and smartphone growth is slowing, too. Those sobering insights were among the hundreds packed into the much-awaited Internet Trends report, an annual tech industry ritual led by Mary Meeker, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The number of global Internet users hovers around 3 billion, with new ones slow to come online. She attributed the slowdown to stagnating gross domestic product. Global GDP growth in six of the last eight years was below the 20-year average. Developing countries have proven harder to capture than expected because Internet access remains inaccessible or unaffordable for many, the report said. Here are some other highlights from the report:

• India is the one country where Internet usage is growing, up 40 percent compared with 33 percent a year ago. India passed the US to become the No 2 global market behind China in 2015.
• The Asia Pacific region represented 52 percent of smartphone users globally in 2015. The rapid growth in recent years has begun to slow, dropping to 23 percent in 2015 from 35 percent in 2014.
• North America, Europe, and Japan represented 63 percent of global GDP in 1985. By 2015, their contribution dropped to 29 percent. China and emerging markets in Asia represented 63 percent of global GDP last year.
• Online advertising is still not very effective. Advertisers are spending an outsize amount on legacy media.
• Global birth rates are down 39 percent since 1960. So where will technology growth come from? Who knows, but at least there's this: Global life expectancy is up 36 percent since 1960.