The Entire Communications Industry, in Less than 200 Pages

Posted At : February 21, 2008 1:28 PM | Posted By : Matt
Related Categories: JJHill Library, HillSearch, BizToolkit

The 2007 Digital Economy Fact Book (pdf) is a tightwad researcher’s dream: In-depth, statistic-heavy, well-cited, and freely-available online. One could hardly ask for more.

This report covers so much ground that any sentences I try to write about it are positively littered with commas and semicolons, and quickly become confusingly long. So instead, I’ll just list out some of the topics covered to give a feel for the extent of the info available here. Bet you can't get to page 188 without learning something new...


Growth of the Internet (page 1)
  • Demographics of internet users
  • Internet activities performed
  • World usage statistics by country
  • Top browsers and search engines
Hardware Sector (page 15)
  • Adoption and penetration rates of new technologies and tools
  • Semiconductor sales and forecasts
  • Sales/market share of PCs, cell phones, smartphones/PDAs, data storage devices, gaming hardware, televisions, MP3 players, and software
Communications (page 37)
  • Telephone subscribership
  • Broadband adoption
  • Wireless industry
  • VOIP, Email/IM, RFID
  • Third Generation Technology
  • Spectrum (I don’t know what these last two things are either)
Digital media (page 63)
  • Television
  • Internet video
  • Cell phone content
  • Music
  • Radio
  • Gaming
  • Online news and classifieds
  • Blogging, podcasting, and tagging
  • Social networking
Electronic commerce (page 83)
  • B2C and B2B e-commerce
  • Internet advertising
  • Online finance
  • Online travel
  • Online health care
Threats to the Digital Economy (page 97)
  • Malicious software
  • Spam
  • Phishing
  • Identity theft
  • Piracy
Worldwide Digital Economy (page 109)
  • Funding for new ideas
  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • IT spending
  • IT employment
  • Outsourcing and offshoring
  • International digital economies

(Source: The best blog/research source on the Internet, Docuticker)

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Jill Walker Rettberg's Gravatar Wow, lots of great stats! It's worth noting though that the book is published by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, which according to their mission statement is for traditional copyright in digital media, against government regulation of any digital media, and sponsored by almost every big name in traditional media I can think of.

Doesn't necessarily make the statistics bad, but it's worth keeping in mind that this is published with a clear agenda.
# Posted By Jill Walker Rettberg | 2/28/08 5:02 AM
Matt's Gravatar Jill makes a great point. Organizations putting content out onto the Internet for free generally have some sort of motive for doing so. Whether that motive is profit through the sale of advertising at their site, to draw attention to a product/service for sale, or to push some sort of ideological/organizational agenda – there’s usually some sort of ulterior motive. This is a clear challenge in Internet research, and an important issue to keep an eye out for. That’s why I was excited that this report cited its sources so well. The presentation of the material is perhaps agenda-based (and we may not agree with that agenda, in fact we may strongly disagree with it), but the numbers can be checked.
I think this topic merits its own post - stay tuned...
Matt.
# Posted By Matt | 2/28/08 9:26 AM
Dan Britton's Gravatar Co-author of the 2006 and 2007 Fact Books here. Although PFF does have an agenda, little of that agenda affects how the Fact Book is written. The main goal is to summarize all the free information about the digital economy that's out there and condense it into one file. For the two books I worked on, I can't recall a single instance where data were omitted because they contradicted a viewpoint that someone at PFF had. Some of the text and interpretations of the data were slightly tilted towards a free-market philosophy, but not to the extent that it distorted anything. I say this as someone who agreed with the PFF "agenda" 80 percent of the time, but not always. (I no longer work there, by the way.) I'm glad to see people are using the book though!
# Posted By Dan Britton | 7/28/08 3:18 PM
Matt's Gravatar Hey Dan, thanks for the comment and the insight into the creation of this report. I think it's a highly useful tool, both for the fact that it brings together numerous statistics into one place, and also because it provides detailed source references so folks can learn more directly from the "horse's mouth." Matt.
# Posted By Matt | 7/29/08 10:38 AM
Adam's Gravatar Dan, this is a great collection of resources and info. It's been more of a help than anything I've found in the past month. Keep it coming!
# Posted By Adam | 8/13/08 4:13 PM
Linkvana's Gravatar I have to agree with Jill's comment, the statistics and info within the book is likely to have swayed info. That being said, I am sure you can get some useful stuff out of it. Thanks for the post!
# Posted By Linkvana | 2/14/09 4:53 PM
Free DSi's Gravatar I agree with you. Why would you build such a comprehensive stats sheet and give it out for free. 9 tims out of 10 there is another motive to which they do this...maybe just recoginistion on the www?
# Posted By Free DSi | 4/11/09 3:07 PM
club penguin's Gravatar Organizations putting content out onto the Internet for free generally have some sort of motive for doing so. Whether that motive is profit through the sale of advertising at their site, to draw attention to a product/service for sale, or to push some sort of ideological/organizational agenda. There’s usually some sort of ulterior motive.
# Posted By club penguin | 5/31/09 9:27 PM
Fingerprint's Gravatar This site is interesting and very informative, nicely interface. Enjoyed browsing through the site.
# Posted By Fingerprint | 6/7/09 10:33 AM
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