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The London Times is reporting “Internet shopping could account for half of Britain’s £300 billion-a-year retail market by as early as 2018 after coming of age this Christmas, it was predicted yesterday” [Christmas Day E-Sales were up 269%]
“James Roper, the chief executive of Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), the internet retail monitor, said that the pace of change would be unprecedented over the next decade, as stores have been left with little choice but to improve significantly their online offering to protect sales.
The Queen’s Christmas Day speech will be posted on YouTube for the first time as the 81-year-old Sovereign keeps up with modern technology. The Royal Channel has been created on youtube.com featuring clips of The Queen and other Royals from both archive and recent footage.
The Queen’s Christmas Day speech is to be uploaded on the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s first ever televised Christmas speech, which she delivered live to the nation in 1957.
Microsoft has agreed to buy Multimap, the privately-owned British company that is second place in the UK Online mapping services market with around 4.000,000 unique visitors last month compared with Google Maps 11,000,000.
Multimap is different from many other mapping solutions because at 3 scales (resolutions) it uses the Ordinance Survey mapping data the use of which is Crown Copyright and as such restricted by the OS.
Multimap is expected to post revenues of around $24,000,00 this year, and made a profit of just under $1,800,000 in 2006.
Set to be 50% higher than last year Deloitte’s report expects the increased online spending to continue into 2008.
“The Internet is now a genuine shopping destination, sixty one percent of households in Great Britain have access to the internet from home in 2007, over half the UK population have shopped online in the last year and the number of consumers doing most of their Christmas gift shopping is set to double this year.”
“The internet is this year’s rising star, doubling its share of consumers to 14% from 2006. Verdict research (2007) reports that 31 million people in the UK now shop on the internet and our research indicates that 7 million of them will be doing most of their shopping online.”
From the Delloitte Christmas Retail Survey 2007 (.pdf)
Worldwide mobile telephone subscriptions have reached 3.3 billion, equivalent to half the global population, 26 years after the first cellular network was launched, research firm Informa said. Reuters has more.
The BBC has a short article looking at studies from uSwitch & Forrester Research
The uSwitch study says the Online shopping in the UK is due to hit £40bn this year. It predicts that the UK’s online spending will further rise to £162bn by 2020, when it will make up 40% of total retail sales.
While Forrester Research predicts that online Christmas shopping will reach £13.8bn this year, a 42% increase on 2006.
Google has unveiled software it hopes will become the “operating system” for a variety of future mobile phones.
The software aims to make it easy to use the web on a phone and to target consumers with mobile adverts.
The BBC has more
Peter Dengate Thrush is to take over from Vint Cerf as the new chairman of the ICANN board. Vint Cerf is leaving because of Term limits, having first been elected to the position in 2000.
Vint Cerf said before stepping down.
“To those who now guide its path into the future comes the challenge to fashion an enduring institution on this solid foundation,I am confident that this goal is not only attainable, it is now also necessary. The opportunity is there: Make it so.”
Under Vint Cerf’s tenure ICANN has grown from around 12 staff members in 2001 to around 100 staff members and a $41.6 million budget for the coming year.
Vint’s inclusiveness, vision and understanding of not only the technical issues but also the nature of both individual and business interests will be a exceptionally hard act to surpass.
Added:
ICANN Press release
Just announced
Microsoft is to take a $240 million stake in Facebook which values Facebook at $15 billion.
Added: The London Times has more & the BBC has 15 reasons why Facebook may be worth $15 billion
GPM Group 