Plenty of scope

Citation

(2001), "Plenty of scope", Work Study, Vol. 50 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2001.07950bab.007

Plenty of scope

Plenty of scope

A report by interactive media consulting group Digiscope, published by Phillips Global Media, has highlighted the rapid expansion of a new digital-based market of "convergent consumers" in Europe over the next five years. By 2005, projections suggest there will be nearly 70 million "convergent consumers" in Europe, using all three key digital platforms of digital TV, mobile/wireless and Internet, growing rapidly from a small base at the end of 1999 of only 1.6 million. (The figure excludes customers only using one or two of the three platforms.) According to the report – Digital TV, Internet and Mobile Convergence: Developments and Projections for Europe – convergence as widely understood, is still many years away and faces considerable cultural and technological hurdles. The real significance in the short to medium term of convergence, is the development of the "convergent consumer", and the way digital platforms allow a much more sophisticated, interactive and responsive relationship with the customer. In the new convergent marketplace, consumer meta content (content about consumers) is going to be as important as content itself. The owners of meta content are going to be extremely powerful in the new convergent marketplace and companies such as BSkyB, Vivendi, NTL, Vodafone and UPC look particularly well positioned to exploit this rapidly growing marketplace. Using the concept of "critical digital mass", the report uses data from across Europe on the penetration of digital TV, Internet and mobile communications to develop a Digiscope Convergence Index for each territory, as well as assessing the cross-platform infrastructure capabilities of 11 key markets across Europe, both in 1999 and 2005. The Digiscope Convergence Index provides a guide to the European markets that are best suited to the introduction of services targeted at the convergent customer. These show that Scandinavia and the UK have the highest penetration of cross-platform consumers and the best overall infrastructures across the three platforms, with Belgium and Italy the worst. The report is available at £995 from Phillips Global Media.