Mary Meeker's Internet Trends Report, 2017: India Highlights

Recently, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker delivered Annual Internet Trends report at Code Conference in Terranea Resort in California. This is the most anticipated report of the year as it highlights some of the important trends in Internet usage.

Meeker called India “most fascinating markets for the internet on the planet.”

Globally, the internet growth has seen a slowdown in the recent years, but that’s not the case with India. In 2016, the number of internet users has seen an upward trend at 28 per cent, second only to China. With 27 per cent online penetration which means there is a lot of hope of more growth in internet users. The mobile internet usage has grown with the dip in the cost of bandwidth.

Here are some takeaways from Mary Meeker's India Slides:

1) Fastest Growing Economy: The report clearly highlights that India’s GDP is the fastest growing economy in the world. India ranks seventh in the world in global GDP level. The GDP growth rate at current prices is 6.8%.

2) Increase in Number of Internet Users: India has seen a tremendous growth in more than 350 million users and online, penetration is growing by 27% in the year 2016.

3) Time Spent on Smartphones: When it comes to the time spent on Android devices or smartphones, India is not behind. In fact, India is way ahead of Brazil, USA, Indonesia and Mexico. Between the year 2014 to 2016, on an average Indian spends more than 140 hours on android phones also in the year 2016, India has surpassed the USA in terms of Google play downloads.

4) Affordability of Smartphones: After such trending internet usage, Indians on the other hand still are not able to afford smartphones, which contribute 8% of annual average GDP per capita. There has been a dip in affordability since 2007 though in 2009 an upward trend was noticed, still less than 15% Indians are able to buy smartphones.

5) Battleground For Mobile Hardware Companies: There has been more than 50% market share in China-based vendors like Xiomi, Lenovo, Oppo, Vivo. Reliance, on the other hand, has gained share in 2016 with the launch of Jio 4G service.

6) Mobile Browsing:In India, then china’s UC browser (50%) is much ahead of USA’s Google Chrome (32%).

7) Top Downloaded Android Apps:  USA’s Whatsapp tops the list, followed by its Facebook Messenger. Both are the messaging apps. 4 out of 10 apps of the USA are mostly used in India; the other two are Facebook and Facebook live.

8) E-commerce Giants fighting for Marketshare: Flipkart, Paytm, Amazon, Snapdeal, Shopclues are some of the major e-commerce giants fighting for their share in Indian market. Amazon has been one the biggest shareholders and sellers in the Indian market.

9) Adhaar: India Adhaar digital IDs have seen a broad coverage. Around 82 per cent of the total population is covered. Banking and other mobile digital payment services are also used access the  internet.

10) Health care: India stands second around 90% after Mexico in private expenditure on health in 2014. Now, as mobile penetration has drastically increased in the country, online services have increased accordingly.

Picture Credit: fastcompany.com

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