Mary Meeker’s annual reading of the tech tea leaves
More prognostication: Mary Meeker’s annual internet trends report is just out. Eleven months a year, Mary Meeker tends to her knitting, doing whatever it is that venture capitalists do (including, we suspect, sacrificing the dreams of millennials on the altar of the VC god known as “10x.”) But once a year, she serves up an ugly, poorly laid-out 200-page PowerPoint deck — a monstrosity that is literally a must-read for VCs, media types, tech geeks, and founders of businesses with any reliance on the internet whatsoever. Investors, analysts and media are still digesting this year’s beast, so we’ll have a proper “takeaway” for you on Sunday.
The three things that stand out from Meeker’s report on a really, really fast first skim:
- The growth of the internet itself is slowing down somewhat (and the greenest pastures remain emerging markets);
- Advertisers aren’t spending enough on mobile (something Enterprise has been saying rather consistently through our long, storied [er, less-than-two-year] history);
- More than 50% of search will be voice or photos within five years rather than tapping away into that nice new search box we rolled out earlier this week.
Can’t wait for us to get back to you by Sunday? The “web-friendly” version of Meeker’s report is here and, better still, you can find the PDF here. Meeker unveiled the presentation at this year’s Code conference by Recode. And keep your fingers crossed that Recode releases Meeker’s appearance as a video or a podcast on its Recode Replay podcast series.