Mobile Monetization Levels to Surpass Desktop in 1-3 Years

As mobile usage increases, Google and Facebook are quickly losing out on their primary source of revenue. But if Mary Meeker's estimates are accurate, that could change very soon.

Meeker, a former Wall Street analyst and a current partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, gave a detailed presentation at this year's All Things Digital conference. In short, Meeker used pattern recognition from the Japanese market, which has seen an increase in mobile success stories. CyberAgent, for example, now reports that its average revenue per paying user on mobile is $418, surpassing desktop revenue.

Here in America, Meeker believes that mobile monetization levels will surpass those on desktop within one to three years. "It just takes time," she said.

A Long Way to Go

In addition to her big prediction for mobile success, Meeker said that there are currently 1.1 billion global mobile 3G subscribers, amounting to 37% growth last year but only 18% penetration. Meanwhile, there are 2.3 billion global Internet users. (I imagine this amounts to 2.3 billion desktop users, though AllThingsD simply reported it as "Internet users."). This area experienced much smaller growth -- just 8%.

But out of the 6.1 billion mobile subscriptions, only 953 million of them belong to smartphones. If you don't have a smartphone, you aren't likely to be surfing the Web on your phone, giving desktop the edge (if only for the time being).

That's not the case for India, however, whose mobile Internet usage surpassed desktop Internet for the first time this month.

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