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Internet Trends for 2013

A recent report (‘Internet Trends for 2013’) by venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB) outlines current movements expected to drive trends in the coming year. These include the growth in emerging markets, uploading at an accelerated pace, increasingly findable and shared content and the increase in mobile and tablet usage.

Internet Users  

In 2012, there were 2.4bn global internet users. There has been a 8% year on year growth driven by emerging markets; China added 264 million user between 2008 and 2012, whilst the USA added 18 million in the same time period. China is far in front of the US in terms of the number of internet users (564 million in China versus 244 in the USA), however it falls far behind when assessed against population penetration (42% China versus 78% USA). India ranks third on the global charts in terms of internet usage with 137 million users, but has a population penetration of just 11%.

Made in the USA

80% of the top ten global internet properties are made in the USA.  On average, 81% of the users of these sites reside outside of the US. The top five globally used sites in 2012 were Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and Wikipedia. The dominance of the US made sites is predicted to continue throughout 2013.

Uploading At an Accelerated Pace  

Content throughout 2012 became increasingly findable. The rate at which digital information is shared has increased by nine times in just five years with content being shared and tagged more than ever in 2013. There are currently 1.1 billion Facebook users worldwide. 68% of these users access the site on their mobile and 60% log-in daily. 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day. Then there’s video. 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, while shorter video options such as Twitter’s Vine and DropCam are also showing impressive growth.

Mobile and Tablets

Mobile traffic is growing 1.5 times year and year and is likely to maintain the trajectory or accelerate beyond that according to the KPCB report. Tablets are witnessing a more rapid growth than smart phones highlighted by the iPad versus iPhone sales ratio. Apple’s tablet is showing growth of three times that of the company’s smart phone.  

Future Predictions

KPCB state in their report that the next trend in internet accessibility will be making internet connected devices wearable. Smart phone users check their phone on average more than 150 times a day; to check messages, the time, social media and calendar updates etc. A sensor-enabled, wearable device provides a ‘hands-free…always on…attention getting’ option.

Reference: “2013 Internet Trends Report” (May 2013), Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers