Tech analyst Mary Meeker's bold predictions for Web, mobile
Internet analyst Mary Meeker commands the attention of the tech industry with her annual insights and predictions -- and this year is no different.
Speaking at the Re/Code Code Conference in Santa Monica, Calif., Meeker, general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, returned to trends she highlighted at the All Things D conference last year -- including her prediction that by 2014, people would be uploading a billion photos a day. That was double the number being uploaded at the time.
It turns out, she underestimated the astounding rate of growth. The number now? More than 1.8 billion photos uploaded and shared per day.
This rapid increase in photos shared is tied to the rapid increase in smartphone use. But as smartphones continue to enter the market, the average price goes down -- further increasing the number of smartphone users, which will eventually slow down the growth in new users.
Not only will smartphone growth start to slow, her presentation stated that the growth in Internet users has already slowed significantly. Meeker noted that the number of Internet users in the 5 biggest markets worldwide increased by only 7 percent in the last year.
Meeker's data showed an 81 percent growth in mobile data traffic, driven strongly by video. Mobile usage counted for 25 percent of total web usage, versus 14 percent last year.
See the full presentation here: