“互联网女王”发布2018年《互联网趋势报告》：互联网用户很难持续增长

玛丽·米克尔的年度科技行业报告一直备受推崇。今年的报告显示，智能手机行业的增长已经陷入停滞。

担任凯鹏华盈（Kleiner Perkins）合伙人的米克尔于两周前召开的2018年Code大会上发布了最新报告。米克尔及其团队调查发现，互联网表现出整体增长放缓的趋势。

她表示，2017年，新智能手机出货量年比未实现增长。现在，全世界超过一半人口在使用互联网，但互联网用户增长率却从12%下降到7%。米克尔称，虽然网络使用量仍在稳步增长，年比增长了4%，但整个互联网行业依旧面临挑战。

米克尔在大会上称：“对于在座的各位商业人士而言，现实就是当你进入一个市场，当市场普及率达到50%，很难再实现新的增长。”

报告中另外一个有趣的事实是，易于使用的应用成为主流，如通信类、商务类或媒体应用。这主要得益于对用户体验的重视。她说道：“随着支付摩擦系数持续下降，通信以及移动支付等产品大幅增长，数字货币开始兴起。”

米克尔称，数据驱动的个性化是改善用户体验的关键，但这当然会存在隐私方面的问题。

她很赞同欧洲新颁布的《通用数据保护条例》（General Data Protection Regulation，GDPR）。她说道：“互联网公司在一定程度上，通过用户数据使低价服务变得更好。而互联网用户基于感知价值，不断增加使用互联网服务的时间。监管机构希望确保数据不会被不正当使用，并且监管机构之间也态度不一。”（财富中文网）

译者：刘进龙/汪皓

The smartphone business is not growing anymore, according to this year’s installment of Mary Meeker’s much-lauded annual tech industry report.

The Kleiner Perkins partner gave her latest presentation two weeks ago at the Code 2018 Conference. The findings of Meeker and her team pointed to a general trend of slowing growth in the Internet.

Shipments of new smartphones showed zero year-on-year growth in 2017, she said. With more than half the people in the world now using the Internet, growth in user numbers has dropped from 12% to 7%. Meeker said internet usage was still growing solidly—4% year-on-year—but the industry still faces a challenge.

“The reality of all for the business people in the room, when you get to a market, when you get to 50% penetration, new growth becomes a lot harder to find,” the venture capitalist told the conference.

Another interesting aspect of Meeker’s presentation was the fact that simple-to-use apps are taking over, whether that’s in messaging, commerce or media. This focus on user experience is having an effect—”With payments friction is declining, products like messengers and also, mobile payments are rising dramatically and digital currencies are emerging,” she said.

Meeker said data-driven personalization was key to improving these user experiences, but there is of course a downside on the privacy front.

“Internet companies are making low price services better in part from user data. Internet users are increasing their time on internet services based on perceived value. Regulators want to ensure data is not used improperly and not all regulators think about this in the same way,” she said, nodding to Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR.)