At the recent All Things Digital conference, held in California, Mary Meeker – a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – presented her much anticipated slideshow “Internet Trends”.
A portion of the presentation was dedicated to mobile computing and the opportunities that abound in this space. Meeker believes we’re still in the very early innings of the mobile movement and as the slides below illustrate, growth is expected to be massive.
As this Fool flipped through the presentation, I couldn’t stop thinking, how is there not room in this burgeoning industry for more than just Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung?
Now that Blackberry (TSX:BB,NASDAQ:BBRY) finally has a critically acclaimed smart phone product, is there really any chance that they aren’t going to ride the wave that Meeker is predicting?
I’ve included some of the more relevant slides below and we’ll quickly go through them, but the entire presentation is worth a flip through.
The first slide demonstrates mobile’s growing share of global internet traffic. Its share currently stands at 15% but is expected to double to 30% by the end of next year. To get to this projection, it’s reasonable to assume more mobile devices will be required.
To bolster this “reasonable” assumption of more mobile devices, the chart below projects where the smartphone market is headed. The 1.5 billion smartphones currently in existence pales in comparison to the 5+ billion mobile phones that are still out there. Meeker expects this gap will close.
The final slide indicates that Blackberry’s share of the global smartphone market has been shrinking on a quarter-by-quarter basis. However, given the entire pie is set to explode, even if the company’s share can plateau from here, sales should increase significantly.
The Foolish Bottom Line
Those that have bet against Blackberry, and there are many given the sizeable outstanding short position, are betting that this company isn’t going to exist for much longer. Given the explosive growth Mary Meeker sees for the entire mobile industry, this seems like a bet that has the odds stacked against it.
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Fool contributor Iain Butler does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this report at this time. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple.
