Mary Meeker Peers Into the Future of Mobile, Wearables and Facebook

Mary Meeker, the Internet analyst, has become something of a legend in the tech world for her annual Internet Trends report. Here are some major takeaways from her latest:

• Mobile Is Moving Fast -- There are about 2.4 billion Internet users worldwide, a gain of 8 percent from 2012, driven largely by emerging markets like Iran and Indonesia. And there are 1.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, compared with 1.1 billion a year earlier. That’s roughly 30 percent growth. In addition, mobile makes up 15 percent of Internet traffic over all.
• Wearables, Sharables, Drivables, Flyables -- The next few decades will be about wearable computing, like Google glass and fitness tracking bracelets, as well as new gadget categories like drones and smarter cars. That, in turn, will drive the personal data revolution.
• The Personal Data Revolution – The amount of personal data from wearables, videos and even sound files that we upload to the Web is growing exponentially and will continue to grow.
• Facebook Is Still the King of Social Media
• The Rise of the Visual Web -- On average, more than 500 million photos are shared each day. Meeker expects that figure to double year over year.
• Americans Share Less Than the Rest of the World -- On average, 24 percent of the world says they share “most or everything” that they do. But only 15 percent of Americans admitted to sharing nearly everything online.