Significant Digits Episode 1 Part 1

Show #1: The Future of the Internet and Everything

Part 1: The Internet is dead, long live the Internet
The data shows the Internet growth will go through an inflection point. Should we panic or celebrate?

 

In this inaugural episode we open with the biggest question facing the biggest technological innovation of our time: the limit to growth of the Internet. The Internet is the backbone of our post-industrial society as much as the railroad was the backbone of the industrial revolution. Even more so, the diffusion of internet consumption is the fundamental engine of growth at a time when industrial economies are all mired in syndromes of underinvestment and misallocation of resources.

And so it matters greatly if and when the Internet will “inflect” in growth, going from acceleration to deceleration. Mobile computing sustained this acceleration, bringing computing and connectivity to the billions for whom the PC would always be beyond reach. But even with the expansion of device-based usage limits are in sight.

The implications could be profound. Frothy valuations and optimism could evaporate. Venture Capital could find few exits and the “second Internet Bubble” could burst. On the other hand, maybe the data shows that opportunity is largely unmet. Quantity of users is but one proxy. How can growth and business model innovation continue?

To help us think this through I have as my guest Marko Anderson, cofounder of Random 1 and a former colleague at Nokia.

Stay tuned for four more parts:

  • Part 2: Browsing vs. Apps The HTML5 vs. Native debate and the jobs the Internet is hired to do.
  • Part 3: Monetize This The problem with business model innovation. When the ad dollars run out, what will take their place?
  • Part 4: Random How discovery is changing and the value of irrationality.
  • Part 5: Glass is half full How can we screw this up? Privacy, Surveillance and The Internet Citizen’s Bill of Rights.

Significant Digits is a talk show where we take time to recognize patterns in the lives of technologies.

  1. Run out of Internet to read? Random’s new iOS app is for you [↩]

Inventive Teens

Philip Elmer-DeWitt cited Piper Jaffray’s latest Teen Survey on Device Ownership where ~7,500 teens in the US are asked about their device ownership. This type of data is similar to the method comScore uses to measure penetration smartphones in the US making the two data sets comparable.

The combined data is shown the following graphs.

Screen Shot 2014-04-10 at 4-10-3.07.04 PM

One graph is the penetration data and the other is the ratio of penetration to unpenetrated on a log scale. The PJC Teen Survey data is shown as dots on both graphs. In the spring of 2012 the difference between teen iPhone ownership and overall population iPhone ownership was 20 percentage points. In the fall 2012 it was 22 points. In spring 2013 it was 25 points. The spread increased to 30 points in the fall of 2013.

Continue reading “Inventive Teens”

Postmodern computing

There are 7.1 billion people on Earth. Coincidentally there are also 7 billion mobile connections.  Those connections are held by 3.45 billion unique mobile subscribers.1 Unsurprisingly, the largest national mobile markets (by number of subscriptions) correspond closely to the most populous nations.

Screen Shot 2014-04-07 at 7.21.46 AM

Considering smartphones, last year 1 billion smartphones were sold and the number of smartphones in use is about 2 billion2

Given the rapid adoption of smartphones, it’s also safe to assume that smartphone penetration will follow population distribution. In the US, where comScore data is published monthly, penetration is following a predictable logistic curve.

Screen Shot 2014-04-07 at 7.55.13 AM

 

Assuming similar patterns world-wide we can forecast regional smartphone penetration. Screen Shot 2014-04-07 at 7.56.49 AM

This yields the following forecast for smartphone usage world-wide. Continue reading “Postmodern computing”

  1. GSMA [↩]
  2. There are also about 2 billion 3G/4G connections world-wide [↩]

Airshow Vancouver, Wed March 26, 2014

We will be conducting our 9th Airshow event in Vancouver next Wednesday, March 26, 2014.

Airshow

The purpose of Airshow is to:

  • Understand how data can be used to persuade through an appeal to logic as well as through empathy.
  • Understand the basics of “data cinematicism” including the techniques analogous to cinematography and direction.
  • Understand story development techniques including how to facilitate the audience’s entry into the story.
  • Learn how to build a cinematic presentation.

The method we devised borrows heavily from the techniques of cinematography and screenwriting to impart meaning to the audience beyond the literal words spoken or images shown on screen. These techniques are demonstrated with “feature presentations” and then deconstructed in interactive lectures. Throughout we also weave Aristotelian rhetorical tips and present from the Asymco repertoire of stories.

Discounted registrations are available for readers of this blog, and students.

Invaluable

The smartphone market continues to grow. 2013 saw total shipment of around one billion units (up from 683 million in 2012). In contrast, non-smartphone shipments continue to decline, with shipments around 800 million (down from 987 million in 2012).

This pattern is shown below:

Screen Shot 2014-03-18 at 3-18-12.45.12 PM

Note that prior to 2012 the non-smart market seemed to be holding steady in spite of the growth in smartphones. The notion that smartphones would become universal was widely dismissed. I certainly heard many objections to my 2010 hypothesis that not only would smartphones become ubiquitous but that it would become increasingly difficult to find anything else to buy. (This in spite of the clearly evident demand for “low-end” non-smart devices.)1

I also suggested that the notion of distinguishing phones with the”smart” tag would become irrelevant and that we would just call these devices “phones”. Continue reading “Invaluable”

  1. The analogy I used was that of the black-and-white TV market as color TV became increasingly popular. There probably was a market for monochrome screens for a long time after they were discontinued but that is beside the point: the old technology becomes increasingly scarce because of economies of scale [↩]

The Thin Red Line | Asymcar

We explore the strategic and tactical considerations behind BMW’s i sub-brand. Why did BMW attach a new BMW sub-brand to a new powertrain rather than using another brand, like Mini? The answer helps explain how innovations and brands inter-relate and how incumbents can attempt to absorb what is potentially non-sustaining.

We consider the pros and cons of innovation within an operating business – “intrepreneurship” – compared with creating an autonomous enterprise for the “new new thing”. I contrast BMW i with General Motors’ failed Saturn experiment.

We consider the burden that regulation, girth, cycle times, legacy practices, financialization and strategy taxes place on incumbents.

Finally, we look at what it takes to cross over the line which separates the device-based nice-to-have infotainment options from the must-have driver and ownership assistants that will inevitably find home in these devices.

via The Thin Red Line | Asymcar.

On Google’s Future. Part 1

From 2005 through 2012 Google site revenues1 have risen at a rate consistent  with the growth in global Internet population excluding China2. The Internet population and Google.com revenues for the period 2005-2012 are shown in the following graph.

Screen Shot 2014-03-13 at 3-13-3.17.02 PM

The correlation is shown in the following graph:

Screen Shot 2014-03-13 at 3-13-3.17.21 PM

Taking into account costs and expenses, on a per-user basis profitability per user (assuming all non-Chinese internet users are Google users) is shown below:

Screen Shot 2014-03-13 at 3-13-3.17.14 PM

The simple conclusion is that Google earns approximately $1.2 per user per quarter (net income is the blue area above). This figure is relatively constant with a slight increase (~20%) over 3 years.

If the company does not alter its business model then the future potential of the business could be measured as a function of Internet (ex. China) population growth.

How hard can that be?

The next post will answer this question.

  1. Google revenues are reported as “Google.com”, “Network”, “Motorola” and “Other”. For this analysis I am including only the Google.com revenues [↩]
  2. Internet population is calculated as a combination of penetration as reported by the ITU and population data from the World Bank [↩]

Asymco

Asymmetric Competition

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