Top 7 internet trends predicted – Part 2
In our last post, we reviewed the first three of Mary Meeker’s top 7 Internet trends for 2016. Today’s post covers the last four trends and shares some of our thoughts on their importance.
Trend 4: Social messaging evolves to business-related communications
Messaging is evolving from simple social conversation to more expressive and business-related communications. This explosive growth is driving dramatically higher traffic on site such as What’s App, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat. Mary says the Internet, chat, and social media are the best way to engage with Millennials. The worst? The telephone.
Trend 5: Mobile use soars, but Smartphone sales are peaking
The average global user now spends about 4 hours per day on their Smartphone. The average phone has 33 apps with 12 of them used daily. Facebook, What’s App, and Chrome are the most popular. Mary says the messaging app is becoming a second home screen (see Trend 4). While iPhone sales appear to be peaking, Amazon Echo sales are taking off.
Trend 6: Voice is becoming the new paradigm in human-computer interaction
The computer interface is evolving from keyboards to microphones as voice becomes the most efficient form of input. It’s fast, easy, personalized, and context-driven. The trend is fueled by speech recognition technology accuracy that is approaching 99%. About two-thirds of all Smartphone owners are using voice assistants, and voice is gaining search share (from 10% to 20% of all searches).
Trend 7: Global data growth is exploding
The growth of global data generation has risen at more than 50% per year since 2010 as data infrastructure costs keep falling (-20% CAGR during the same period). Data has become the platform that is powering a host of new services, systems, and apps. Mary predicts that the “next big wave” will be leveraging this unlimited connectivity and storage to collect, aggregate, correlate, and interpret big data to improve people’s lives and enable enterprises to operate more efficiently. A note of warning: About 4 billion data records were breached in 2013. As data explodes, security and consumer privacy concerns are rising rapidly.
Our take
The goal for B2B marketers now becomes leveraging these trends to accelerate revenue growth and reach the new Generation Z and millennial audiences that are entering the workforce. That means going beyond mobile formatting and advertising to harnessing the Smartphone’s social messaging, voice, imaging, and video power. It also means understanding how to monetize the myriad opportunities presented by Big Data and the Internet of Things.