Category: Internet economy

Mobile internet trends

It seems like everything goes mobile these days. Mobile phones get smarter, tablets get more and more popular and people use their mobile phones for much more than voice. Mobile internet usage includes news, entertainment, shopping, social networking and much more.

The Facts on mobile internet

First of all – what is mobile internet? It is the usage of internet on mobile devices such as handhelds, tablets, personal assistants, netbooks or laptops. It has become quite popular in the past 3 years growing growing from under 1% of total internet traffic in 2009 to more than 10% in 2012.

The mobile internet is expected to surpass desktop internet by 2014, as shown in the attached graph (source). Such a fast adoption rate is caused by:

  1. Decrease in PC sales (HP sales in the US decreased 12 percent in the second quarter of 2012 and Dell’s PC sales decreased by 9%).
  2. Increase in tablet and smartphones adoption (Apple alone has shipped over 60 million tablets in just 2 years from launch and more than 20 million iphones)
  3. Decrease in 3G connectivity costs (Idea Cellular decreased the costs for 3G connectivity in India by 70% )
  4. Mobile penetration is disproportionately larger than internet penetration. The global mobile adoption rate is now 86.7% . The global internet adoption rate is 32.7%. Mobile operators will grab out and reach the treasure that is mobile data traffic. They have the infrastructure, the clients and the distribution.
  5. Voice has been steadily declining compared to data traffic in developed countries.

Mobile internet plans are decreasing and adoption rate is increasing – what now?

With mobile internet plans decreasing we will see a clear increase in adoption rate. There is still a long way to go as mobile traffic accounts for only 10% of all internet traffic. Taking into account the fact that Internet has just 32.7% penetration we see that there is a huge opportunity there: mobile internet traffic is due to increase by at least 1000% in the next five years.

How can we benefit from mobile traffic growth?

Using this date one might think of this potential opportunities:

  1. Increase in cheap smartphones sales. As you can see in a previous article almost 75% of all mobile phones are owned by consumers in developing countries. This consumers need low-cost, decent performance, mobile internet ready devices.
  2. Increase in mobile operators revenue. The untapped potential of data traffic is even bigger than the one voice plans had. Mobile operators already have the client base, the mobile infrastructure and the distribution network to reach this potential market.
  3. Increase in mobile commerce: whether retail or paid apps distribution the mobile sales will increase in the future, even at a faster rate.
  4. Premium mobile entertainment: just like apps, paid entertainment will develop at an exponential rate in the future.
  5. Decreased market for desktop based software companies: Microsoft has already began to feel the surge in desktop sales as desktop based software such as Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office will either adapt or fade away.

How is Facebook changing the Internet Economy?

By now you have probably heard of this little thingie called Facebook. You have also heard it has a bunch of users and these users are spending a lot of time on the platform sharing thoughts, news, photos, playing games or interacting with each other.

The Influence of Facebook on the Internet Economy

Right now Facebook accounts for roughly 30% of all internet users and is estimated that 20% of all pageviews on the Internet are on Facebook.

Facebook is big. It is so big that Internet World Stats added a special Facebook usage indicator to each country. As you can see there is no Google usage, no Yahoo usage, no Twitter usage indicator but there is a Facebook usage indicator. For good reasons too …

Using Facebook to increase online sales

In just 8 years from the 2004 launch, Facebook is expected to reach 1 billion users in 2012. That number is more than impressive. It is fastest adoption of any communication related technology.

Facebook related sales are a huge part of what lures giants such as Amazon, Apple, Ebay on the platform. From my experience Facebook seems to be the most profitable refferal for small and mid-size ecommerce companies and accounts for a large part of sales generated by larger online retailers.

While Facebook stores may not yet be the best choice (JC Penney, Gap and Nordstrom have opened and than closed their Facebook stores) there is a clear opportunity to be harnessed with Facebook related ecommerce.

Facebook creates jobs, has a  7.3 Billion Euro economic impact on Europe

A recent study by Deloitte states that Facebook accounts for a 7.3bn Euro economic impact and has so far, through the creation of Facebook pages and advertising , created more than 110.000 jobs in the EU.

Just like Europe many other regions benefit from the impact Facebook has had in the recent years. In the EU the country with the heaviest Internet Economy, the UK, has also the largest Facebook user base. Although merely a correlation and not a cause for the heavy impact the internet has on the UK economy it is easy to see that Facebook usage increases internet economy impact and many small and mid-sized companies can benefit from it.

Where is Facebook headed?

With such extraordinary growth and impact on our lives, both socially and economically, Facebook is sure to develop even more. Facebook is more than an website or application. It is a communication framework, a market that has already changed the life of its users. It will continue to do so. It will reach beyond extending the Internet.

I expect Facebook to cycle through some inherent changes but in the end it will probably be the biggest internet – based business in the world.

UK – the heaviest Internet Economy in the world

Internet has changed many aspects of our lives and will continue to do so. As people shift their attention more and more toward the internet so does the economy.

UK leads the way towards this new economy with a £82bn ($128 billion) internet economy. About 16% of this ecosystem is accounted for by mobile connections. The overall traffic is expected to increase each year between 2010 and 2015 by 37%. What does that mean? Having an ever increasing interest for mobile connections and ecommerce we might see three trends in the future:

  1. Mobile networks will need better infrastructure to handle the growing traffic.
  2. Mobile internet will increase in popularity which leads us to…
  3. Mobile commerce will set new challenges to retailers as consumers get more informed, faster deliveries and better deals

Data regarding these numbers has been put together on a study commissioned by Vodafone UK to ATKerney. You can find the study here.

It’s interesting to see that the internet economy reacts to people needs and wants as is stated in the graph bellow:

 

As you can see the internet is expected to be the most commonly used media in Europe by 2013, with 50% of all media consumption.

The other media (radio, print, TV) is expected to continue to decrease in the following years.

With smartphone usage doubled between 2008 and 2010 it is expected that smartphone terminals will be a major player in the internet economy ecosystem. Data is already used more often than voice. Mobile operators will adjust their market accordingly and that will increase the internet consumption even more.

Online retail (both web and mobile) accounts for roughly £45bn ($70bn) – approximately 6% of GDP, leading the UK to the 1st place in G20 countries as internet economy share of GDP.