Mobile Internet Firms Land $19.2 Billion in Funding in Last Year
One surefire way for channel partners to stay ahead of the curve on market opportunities is to follow the money—the investment money, that is. In the last 12 months, some $19.2 billion in funding has been funneled to mobile Internet companies, according to investment advisers Digi-Capital, which tracks such things.
One surefire way for channel partners to stay ahead of the curve on market opportunities is to follow the money—the investment money, that is. In the last 12 months, some $19.2 billion in funding has been funneled to mobile Internet companies, according to investment advisers Digi-Capital, which tracks such things.
The $19.2 billion figure represents a 232 percent increase over the last 12 months, with about 22 percent of it pointed at mobile commerce firms, which garnered some $4.2 billion in funding in the same period, followed by mobile Internet investments in travel/transport at $3.3 billion, utilities at $1.8 billion and games at $1.1 billion, Digi-Capital said.
“Ten other mobile Internet sectors raised over half a billion dollars each—food & drink, enterprise/B2B, social, tech, advertising/marketing, messaging, medical, photo & video, music and finance,” Digi-Capital managing director Tim Merel told VentureBeat.
Digi-Capital’s findings can be found in the company’s Mobile Internet Investment Review Q3 2014. The advisory firm projects mobile revenue to rise by more than 300 percent in the next four years to $700 billion by 2017, $516 billion of which will be in mobile commerce. Of the remainder, consumer apps will account for $74 billion, enterprise mobility some $53 billion, mobile ads will hit $42 billion and the new wearables category will reach about $11 billion, according to Digi-Capital.
“Mobile’s so big, it’s hard to take in all at once,” Merel said. “When we broke down the data by sector … what jumped out was the power of mCommerce to drive the market. Growing from over $100B to half a trillion dollars globally, it commands the lion’s share.”
For now, mobile commerce, while the recipient of huge funding, isn’t providing investors with a return on their investment, posting a negative 22 percent return for the last 12 months. Other underperforming sectors include utilities at a negative 67 percent return, advertising and marketing at negative 56 percent and app store and app distribution at negative 43 percent return on investment.
Still, the mobile Internet story is still in its formative stages and mobile commerce’s best days likely lie ahead, Merel said.
“There have been lots of big numbers already, but for mobile Internet investors the best is yet to come,” he said.
