Global mobile data traffic as a percentage of overall Internet traffic will likely accelerate at a rate of 1.5 times its current trajectory. Much of that traffic will likely come from people wanting to share content--photos, video and more--via their mobile devices, including wearable computing devices.
In the latest Internet trends report from legendary Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Internet analyst Mary Meeker, revealed at the AllThingsD conference, Meeker predicted a huge uptick in wearable computing devices driven by consumers' need to share everything over mobile.
Meeker said that there are 1.5 billion mobile subscribers globally today compared to 1.1 billion a year ago. Mobile now makes up 15 percent of Internet traffic overall.
Even though 58 percent of the U.S. wireless subscriber base owns a smartphone, Meeker expects rapid growth to continue globally. Interestingly, she also says that despite an initial slow uptick in tablet sales, the devices are now growing more rapidly than smartphones at a rate of three times that of the iPhone.
But perhaps the biggest area to watch is wearable/shareable/drivable/flyable devices such as Google Glass and fitness tracking devices that are in the early stages now but will escalate as pricing drops and functionality improves. Meeker noted that smartphone users today typically reach for their device 150 times or more per day, but with a wearable device they could become hands-free.
These wearable devices will likely drive a personal data revolution, creating more opportunities for people to upload data about their lives, whether that's via social media, video, music or more. On average 24 percent of the world says they share almost everything they do, Meeker noted. Surprisingly, Americans are a little more private than the rest of the world, with just 15 percent admitting to sharing everything online.
For more:
- see this KPCB Internet trends slide show
- see this NY Times article
- see this AllThingsD report
Related articles:
Gartner: Smartphone, tablet sales to top 1.2B in 2013
KPCB: Android adoption growing 6x faster than iPhone
Meeker's Internet Trends report details mobile's growing impact