Morgan Stanley’s uber-analyst Mary Meeker recently published her 671(!) page report on the state (and future) of the mobile internet. Of her eight “key themes” in the report, one really stood out:
Mobile is Ramping Faster Than Desktop Internet Did and Will Be
Bigger Than Most Think – a confluence of five factors (3G + Social
Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices) Are Driving This
Change
Whoa. Think about that for a second. Mobile Internet usage is ramping even faster
than Desktop usage did between the early 90s and today. As soon as
2012, smartphones are predicted to outship worldwide PC shipments.
So what does this mean to the customer conversation? Two things:
- You need to be thinking now about how you reach customers via the mobile channel
- More importantly, you need to be thinking now (or, perhaps even last week) about how customers reach you via the mobile channel
Now, this was the slide that blew me away:
Check that out. Not just the rate of growth, but the magnitude as
well. While the iPhone does not equal the entirety of the mobile
market by any means, it’s stunning to see that the iPhone + iTouch have
8x the amount of market penetration that AOL did at a similar point in
its trajectory, and over 5x the number of users that Netscape did.
This isn’t just a wave, or even a tsunami. Mobile is going to
fundamentally change the landscape with respect to how customers and
companies connect.
