The Mother Lode of Data on the Mobile Internet

Link to the original morgan stanley page: http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/mobi...

The first chart fails to correct for time (I'd generally expect more people to be using any service in 2007 than 1999, so the raw numbers don't tell me anything).

It is difficult to compare growth rates in the second chart because the two things we want to compare are stacked on top of each other. It's not clear if the growth rates are similar or different.

The third chart similarly fails to illustrate its point. It's not clear if time spent online is remaining constant from year to year--increasing time spent on Facebook does not necessarily decrease time spent on Google. It's also unclear if search engines and social networking sites are competing for time--it seems straightforward that what Google sees as successful (users find results quickly, spend most of their time reading linked sites) is not what Facebook is trying to optimize (time spent on facebook.com).

Direct link to the presentation: http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs...

It's worth having a look at it -- there are numerous goodies inside not mentioned in the article! :)

PS: Interesting detail on Slide 93: "Morgan Stanley is currently acting as exclusive financial advisor to AdMob, Inc ("AdMob") in relation to their acquisition by Google Inc, as announced on November 9, 2009. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. AdMob has agreed to pay fees to Morgan Stanley for its services that are subject to the consummation of the proposed transaction."

I wonder how $40 of advertising revenue per internet user per year is even feasible. Many of those users are children who can't buy things without a credit card. I can't imagine that the average amount of money spent on the internet per year per user is greater than $40. But I may be wrong.