Category Archives: Information Technology

Home Wireless Routers

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Many people who own tablet computers, laptops, and e-readers own wireless routers. Wireless routers allow them to connect to the Internet through these devices from anywhere in their homes. Data show sales of home wireless routers in 2005 and 2011.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2005 and 2011
Market Size: $700 million and $1.3 billion respectively
Source: Tamara Chuang, “When the Home’s Most Important Internet Device Fails,” The Street, September 17, 2012, available online here.
Original Source: Dell’Oro Group
Posted on September 26, 2012

Newspapers

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Annual revenue generated by the newspaper industry in the United States fell again in 2010, following a pattern seen throughout the last decade. The most recent Service Annual Survey, published by the U.S. Census Bureau, shows a decline in revenues from 2005 to 2010 for the newspaper publishing industry of 30 percent, and this represents a loss of revenue before inflation. The loss, when adjusted for inflation, was 42 percent.

Today’s market size is the size of the newspaper industry in the United States based on annual revenues in 2010.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: $34.7 billion
Source: “Table 3.0.1 Information Sector (NAICS 51)—Estimated Revenue for Employer Firms: 2005 through 2010,” Service Annual Survey, February 2, 2012, available online here.
Posted on February 20, 2012

Textbooks

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An announcement is expected on Thursday, January 19th, from Apple Corporation having to do with their plans in the area of electronic textbooks. As one might imagine, much attention is being paid to this news by the academic world and the publishing world alike.

Today’s market size is an estimated total value of textbook sales in the United States based on a quote from Steve Jobs in the recently published biography about him by Walter Issacson. A brief look at the Census Bureau’s data on the topic suggests that the estimate is reasonable. The Census Bureau figure is provided here as well.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2007 and 2010
Market size: $7.06 billion in 2007 (Census data) and $8 billion (Jobs quote from 2010 which appears in the biography Steve Jobs
Source: “Sector 51: Information: Industry Series: Preliminary Product Lines by Kind of Business for the United States: 2007,” 2007 Economic Census, available here. The Jobs quote is from an article by Roger Yu in USA Today, titled “Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption,” published on January 16, 2012 and available here.
Original source: U.S. Census Bureau
Posted on January 18, 2012

Cantaloupes and Other Agricultural Commodities

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Being people who work with statistical data every day it was with great pleasure that we read recently that the USDA has decided to reverse its earlier decision to eliminate dozens of longstanding statistical reports that it has maintained for decades. Turns out the industries being covered by these reports find them extremely valuable, essential really. So, industry leaders explained just how important those reports are to their planning and financing and the USDA reconsidered. We find this development most encouraging. Some things really are best done at the large scale by an entity not motivated by its own commercial interests.

Today’s market size, selected from a long list of in-depth USDA commodity reports, is the market for domestic cantaloupe. It is the value (farm value or wholesale value) of cantaloupes harvested in in the United States in 2010 when 77,430 acres were planted with cantaloupe.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: $314.4 million
Source: William Neuman, “U.S. Reverses Decision To End Farming Reports,” The New York Times, December 24, 2011, page B3, available online here. The USDA report on cantaloupes can be found online here. The figure used here is from Table 3—U.S. Cantaloupe: Acreage, Yield, Production, and Value, 1950-2010.
Original source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Posted on December 30, 2011

Books

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During this season of gift-giving, books are one category of gift that has seen some growth in recent years. The publishing industry is going through significant changes as it adjusts to huge shifts in the world of publishing, originating for the most part from the digitizing of its products and the move to selling electronically, whether traditional books or digitized books.

Today’s market size is the size of the U.S. book publishing industry based on net sales revenues. The market sizes listed below are based on traditional publisher sales— regardless of the format of the books sold—but do not include sales made by self-publishers or some very small imprints.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2008 and 2010
Market size: $26.5 and $27.9 billion respectively
Source: “BookStats Overall Highlights,” a report by the Association of American Publishers and made available online here.
Original source: Association of American Publishers
Posted on December 23, 2011

Ham Radio Operators

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Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, uses a designated “radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication,” according to Wikipedia. Ham radio operations are coordinated by the International Telecommunication Union. Ham radio operators must demonstrate knowledge in electronics and regulations in order to obtain a license for their radio station. Once licensed, the ham radio operator can communicate with people throughout the world.

Amateur radio began in the late 19th Century. By the late 20th Century, the hobby’s
popularity was waning; however, in the early 21st Century, ham radio saw a surge in the number of enthusiasts. By 2010, the number of ham radio licenses in the United States had increased 60 percent since 1981. In 2007, the United States Federal Communications Commission stopped requiring knowledge of Morse Code in order to obtain a license. The increase in ham radio licenses has been attributed to this. In 2010 alone, there were 30,000 new applications for ham radio licenses.

Today’s market size is the total number of people that have ham radio licenses in the United States.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market Size: 700,000
Source: Matt Sepic, “Ham Radio Growing in the Age of Twitter,” NPR, April 5, 2010, available online here and “Amateur Radio,” Wikipedia, available online here.
Posted on December 9, 2011

Data Loss

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That sinking feeling… we have all probably been there, face to face with a computer we count on that has begun to act up. The loss of data resulting from computer hardware failure, software corruption or even human error, is painful and costly. Measuring the loss is a difficult task but one that was undertaken by Dr. David M. Smith and reported on in the article from which we source today’s market size post. A full citation is below.

Specifically, the market size presented here is the estimated annual loss to businesses in the United States due to data losses on PCs and laptops. It dates back to 2003 but it provides us with a scope for the problem and a scope that we know has only grown. For further details, check the source article which defines things clearly.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2003
Market size: $18.2 billion
Source: David M. Smith, “The Cost of Lost Data,” Graziadio Business Review, 2003, available online here.
Original source: Graziadio School of Business and Management, Pepperdine University
Posted on December 1, 2011

Computers in the U.S.

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The steady rise in demand for computers and electronic computing devices in the United States appears, when charted, as a line moving in exactly the opposite direction as the domestic production and shipments of these same products. This is an industry (NAICS 334111) that highlights a trend towards increasing consumption of a product and declining production of the same which feeds the U.S. trade imbalance. But that leads us to complex questions we don’t really want to address here. Here, we present market sizes and today’s is based on the value of Electronic Computer Manufacturing in the United States in 2000 and 2010 as well as the value of net imports of the same products in 2000 and the forecasted value for 2010.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2000 and 2010
Market size: U.S. manufacturing $69.3 and $27.9 billion
Market size: Net imports $89.4 and $199.3 billion
Source: Computer value of shipments from Annual Survey of Manufactures 1997, and the 2002 Economic Census. Net imports of Electric and Electronic Equipment from Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2000. Net imports of Computers and Electronic Products from Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012.
Posted on November 29, 2011

“e-Learning” Hardware and Software

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The use of computers and other technological devices in the classroom has long been a source of debate among educators. Equipping schools with the most cutting edge technology is costly and the benefits of these expenditures in actually teaching students is not always evident. Nonetheless, in a world in which computers are ubiquitous the desire to have our children use modern technology with confidence helps to drive growth in the market for “e-learning” devices and software.

Today’s market size is a forecast of the value of the e-learning sub-sector of “the global education market” in the year 2015.

Geographic reference: World
Year: Forecast for 2015
Market size: $69 Billion
Source: “Brave New World: The Changing Landscape of Education and Technology,” April 2010, a report posted online by the firm Spire Research & Consulting and available here.
Original source: Marijk van der Wende, “The Role of US Higher Education in the Global E-Learning Market,” Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), Research & Occasional Paper Series, University of California, Berkeley, 2002
Posted on September 14, 2011

MHealth

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The term “mHealth” is one being used to help define a category of medical services and devices and a growing part of the healthcare industry. It stands most simply for mobile health care, more fully “emerging mobile communications and network technology for healthcare.”

This market encompasses the use of mobile technology in the service of providing health care. It includes all those applications which combine body sensors with mobile or static devices designed to monitor a patient’s vital signs or some specific bodily function. The infrastructure behind these devices is also part of the category. An example of such a device is an electrode patch which may be worn by a patient and automatically sends the monitoring center information about the patient while he or she is on-the-go. The information is sent by a tiny radio transmitter built into the epidermal electronic device.

Today’s market size is the estimated size of the market for mHealth products in 2010 and a forecast for the size in 2014. Please note, however, that this market has yet to be well defined and as a result various research firms have come up with widely disparate projections of its size. The source listed below provides a link to an article explaining this problem more fully, titled “mHealth predictions: $1.9B, $4.4B, $4.6B?” Defining the market is key!

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010 and a forecast for 2014
Market size: $1.5 and $4.6 billion respectively
Source: “Market Size Projections for mHealth and Wireless Health,” Wireless Health Strategies, March 19, 2010, available online here.
Original source: CSMG, a division of TMBG Global
Posted on September 06, 2011

Home Entertainment Market

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Home Entertainment Spending, 2000-2010

Today’s market size is the value of spending on the home entertainment segment related to films and all forms of videos that are rented and purchased, on DVD, CD, and downloaded electronically. The graph shows how this market has fared for the first decade of this century and shows that even the strong home entertainment segment has seen declines during the recession that started in December 2007. Actually, spending in this market peaked in 2004 and 2005 and has declined slightly every year since then.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: $18.8 billion
Source: “DEG Year-End 2010 Home Entertainment Report,” a report produced by the industry-funded nonprofit corporation Digital Entertainment Group. The report is available online here.

e-Education—Students Enrolled in Online Courses

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Enrollment in online courses

The number of students taking at least some of their classes online has risen steadily throughout the first decade of the 21st Century. In 2003, 11.2% of college and university students took at least one class online. By 2009, 27.4% did. The chart at the right shows the growth in the number of students enrolled in at least one online course in the Fall of each year.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2003 and 2009
Market size: Approximately 1.9 million and 5.6 million students respectively

Source: “Entering the Mainstream: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2003 and 2004,” [Abstract], Sloan Consortium, available online here; “Survey Reports: Online Education Grows by Almost a Million Students,” [Abstract], Sloan Consortium, available online here; “Table 176. Total Fall Enrollment in Degree-Granting Institutions, by Level of Enrollment, Sex, Attendance Status, and Type and Control of Institution: 2003,” Digest of Education Statistics: 2005, Spring 2004, available online here; “Table 202. Total Fall Enrollment in Degree-Granting Institutions, by Level of Enrollment, Sex, Attendance Status, and Type and Control of Institution: 2009,” Digest of Education Statistics: 2010, September 2010, available online here.

Graph Source: “Entering the Mainstream: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2003 and 2004,” [Abstract], Sloan Consortium, available online here; “Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States: 2006,” [Abstract], Sloan Consortium, available online here; “Staying the Course — Online Education in the United States, 2008,” [Abstract], Sloan Consortium, available online here; “Survey Reports: Online Education Grows by Almost a Million Students,” [Abstract], Sloan Consortium, available online here.

The Public Cloud

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Cloud computing is, in the simplest terms, the use of a remote location, accessible through the Internet, to store the data and applications used on a computer. We discuss this market in more detail in a post from May 3rd. Today’s market size is the size of the public cloud which is defined by the source as a service that is commercially offered to an “unrestricted marketplace of potential users.”

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2010 and forecast for 2015
Market size: $21.5 and $72.9 billion respectively
Source: Larry Dignan, “IDC: Public Cloud Market Will Hit $72.9 Billion in 2015,” ZDNet, June 20, 2011, available online here.
Original source: IDC

VOIP Providers

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Today’s market size is based on the revenues earned by Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) providers in 2010. VOIP saw a tremendous 194 percent growth from 2000 to 2010. This industry is expected to grow another 17.4 percent from 2010 to 2016.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size:: $12.5 billion
Source: Phil Izzo, “Top 10 Thriving Industries,” The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2011, available online here
Original source: IBIS World

Digital Publishing Market

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UK books

Data show combined digital sales in the United Kingdom, including academic, professional, school, and consumer digital downloads and e-books. Academic and professional digital sales accounted for £84 million. Consumer sales, which includes fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books, were £16 million. Of that £16 million, e-book sales accounted for £13 million. The graph to the right breaks down consumer digital sales by category.

Geographic reference: United Kingdom
Year: 2010
Market size: £120 Million
Source: Philip Jones, “Digital Sales Now Worth 6%, as E-books Grow 300% in 2010,” TheBookseller.com, March 5, 2011 available online.
Original source: Publishers Association

Librarian Corp

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In an era which defines itself as the “Information Age,” it should come as no surprise that libraries have seen their usage numbers increasing annually for a decade. Today’s market size looks at the Librarian Corp—number of librarians working as librarians in the United States in 2008 and forecasted to be working in 2018 based on projections by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2008 and 2018
Market size: 159,900 and 172,400 respectively
Source: “Librarians,” Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-2011 Edition, December 3, 2010, available on the BLS web site here.
Original source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Cloud Computing

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A term we hear quite often these days is cloud computing. The personal computer revolution was, in part, a step away from what were then the large, centralized mainframe computers on which data was stored and accessed through workstations. With a personal computer, one had everything on his or her own device. Now, in a way, there is a decoupling again of the data from the device. Cloud computing is, in the simplest terms, the use of a remote location, accessible through the Internet, to store the data and applications used on a computer—instead of a hard drive on the local computer or local network of computers.

This is a growing business but one whose boundaries are still being defined, which makes it difficult to measure. It is hard to keep the image of a person trying to measure a cloud from coming to mind. Consequently, one can find many different size estimates for cloud computing, the differences usually having to do with how the market is defined. What we present here is an estimate of the revenue from business cloud services—hardware and software infrastructure as well as the leasing of space—so it does not include, for example, the services provided to people wishing to back-up their family photo albums. Cloud computing services to the individual is another large business and one that may be included in other estimates of the nebulous cloud computing market.

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2010 and forecast for 2014
Market size: $22.2 billion and $55.5 billion respectively
Source: Lohr, Steve, “The Business Market Plays Cloud Computing Catch-Up,” The New York Times, April 15, 2011, page B16
Original source: IDC

BBC Funding

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As a bit of a tip-of-the-hat to the royal wedding being celebrated today, we look at the company that will no doubt lead the rest in covering this event, the British Broadcasting Corporation, known around the world as the BBC. Today’s market size is the estimated total value of the annual licensing fee which is levied on every U.K. household that has a television set. This fee was established under law in 1922 and although controversial today, remains in place. The sum collected makes up approximately 80 percent of the BBC’s annual budget.

Geographic reference: United Kingdom
Year: 2010
Market size: £3.6 billion (approximately $5.6 billion based on the exchange rate at the end of 2010)
Source: Lyall, Sarah and Eric Pfanner, “The Beeb Is Struggling to Tighten Its Belt,” The New York Times, April 24, 2011, page B1.
Original source: BBC

e-Filing in the United States

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Individual income tax returns were due for 2010 yesterday. A large number of these tax returns are now filed electronically. In 2010 e-filing accounted for 69.3% of all individual income tax forms filed for the tax year 2009. Today’s market size is the number of those returns filed as of December 31, 2010. The IRS expects this figure to rise for coming tax years. Of the returns filed electronically last year, 35.3% were filed by the filer him or herself and the remaining 64.7% were filed by a professional preparer.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: 98,740,000 individual tax returns for tax year 2009
Source: “2010 Filing Season Statistics,” an online report made available online by the
IRS here.
Original source: U.S. Internal Revenue Service