Buzz: Mary Meeker Unplugged
"You say you want a revolution...We all want to change the world"
-- Beatles
Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley's Internet Diva from the Bubble, is back and firing on all cylinders. She gave a great presentation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business on "Global Technology/Internet Trends". I highly recommend it as it is full of a broad array of interesting statistics and analysis on the next technology wave. Some of the more interesting facts:
1) the US prominence in consumer Internet use is waning quickly. North America represented 66% of Internet users in 1995 and only 23% in 2005. More and more activity, market focus and innovation will be taking place overseas.
2) technology often follows a boom, bust, boom pattern. Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Yahoo! Japan and Amazon had, cumulatively, a $2B market cap at IPO, $178B value at peak in 3/00, a $32B value at trough in 10/02 and a $262B market cap as of 11/05. Buy when there is blood in the streets as they say...
3) we are entering into, perhaps, the biggest of all technology cycles led by PC Internet (broadband) and the Mobile Internet. Previous cycles were Mainframe --> Minicomputer-->PC-->PC Internet (Narrow band). Now add --> PC Internet (Broadband)--> Mobile Internet.
4) Driving these two cycles are a) broadband penetration (hitting 25-30% in 2004) and b) 3G penetration (expected to hit 25-30% in 2007). When people are able get high speed service to their phones and laptops wirelessly, we will truly see information become untethered. Seamless mobility...
5) Two key risks threatening are:
a) the lack of engineering students in the US (heard this before???)
b) litigation: 2001, US industry spend more on tort litigation ($205B) than on R&D ($184B).
6) The PC-Mobile Device is the next "client-server". Users make changes and control preferences on their PC which pushes to mobile (or provides for abbreviated versions of content).
7) VoIP, IP Video, User Generated Content...the list goes on of "game changing" technologies enabled by broadband to home and mobile.
8) US Ad spending on Internet continues to rise, slowly displacing each of the traditional channels.
9) watch the kids for future of information and technology usage...
Click on the link above and check out the full 58 page presentation. It is one of the most interesting and insightful presentations I have come across in a long time.