Below we have synthesised the key themes from the latest Internet Trends Report from Mary Meeker at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. We don’t purport this to be our own ideas, but provide it as an interesting resource (see below for Australian ramifications). Three key trends are evident to us from the report: the shift to mobile, the shift to a service economy and finally that disruption of traditional industries is likely to continue for some time yet.

Understanding the Australian context

The Internet Trends Report provides interesting insight, but it’s important to understand the Australian context. Our market is dominated by duopolistic and oligopolistic market structures. There have been many instances where this has resulted in slower adoption of new technologies as the incumbents have been able to manage the pace of change. However, once the technological change takes place (often driven by consumer’s demand for change), Australia has often experienced a rapid pace of change.

Therefore while there are many parallels with the trends in the Internet Trends Report (which are typically based on US experiences), we caution taking a generalised view and suggest that these trends are considered on a sector by sector basis.

We highlight the following key data points from an Australian perspective:

• The shift to mobile – mobile share of time is significant and growing with 22% of all screen time coming from mobile;

• Mobile accounts for ~7% of all AdEx, which is disproportionately low against its 22% share of time. This is broadly in-line with the global perspective. While it suggests an opportunity to close the gap, we highlight that structural issues may be causing this gap (ie advertiser adoption of mobile medium coupled with consumer push-back);

• Ecommerce penetration of Australian retail sales is about half that of the US suggesting more retail dollars will flow to ecommerce channels;

• Similar to the US, around 85-90% of all jobs come from the service sector and this is unlikely to change as the shift to a services economy continues.