GPM Group

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.