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Market Dynamics and Trends
Users and the enterprises (or in the case of newspapers, the households) in which they reside are two major funders of the information industry at an individual, departmental, or enterprise-wide (household) level. Advertisers are the other main source of funding for the industry. They are changing the face of the information industry at an unprecedented pace, creating new demands and challenges. Key factors we see include:
- Continued pressure on budgets means that price points are a major consideration for end users
- Renewed emphasis in enterprises on knowledge management and records management to help with thorny challenges like information overload, employee productivity, enterprise search, global teaming, document version control, compliance, improved and faster decision-making, and eliminating redundancies or improving efficiencies.
- Multi-nationalism and the expansion of operations and markets to China, India, and other distant locations
- Open source software (OSS), community-driven product development, research and development, bottom-up development, shared resources, and shared learning abound
- The interconnected nature of the network is causing the emergence of "open" models in a range of different markets, particularly in the Scientific, Technical & Medical Information, Legal, Tax & Regulatory, and Education & Training segments. This poses challenges for publishers trying to generate revenue and profits from content and services where users are increasingly demanding free access to content, but these challenges can be addressed by innovative business models and by new ways of delivering services to, and interacting with, the marketplace
- Web 3.0 and Web 3D. Service providers are experimenting with Web 3.0 and Web 3D to create interactive spaces that are more personal, interactive, and "real" in their efforts to form a relationship with the end user
- The use of digital delivery media and devices in schools is revolutionizing the world of education. Lectures available by iPod and whiteboards in classrooms are changing the ways in which people teach and learn, with significant implications for the publishers serving those spaces. This not only changes the role of the teacher but has also resulted in student frustration with book pricing. In addition, students' increasing reliance on mobile delivery devices (phones, laptops, iPods) is at odds with course systems, e-mail, and other systems used by professors and educational institutions. However, complaints about the costs of education putting courses out of some students' reach is likely to diminish as distance learning programs come into their own
- Continued frustration with search failure rates and migration to expert networks and social networks and other forms of intermediation
- Continued reliance on personal and mobile devices as alternatives that augment the laptop and PC-driven world
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