Web 2.0: Where does Europe stand?

This report provides a techno-economic analysis of Web 2.0 and an assessment of Europe's position in Web 2.0 applications. Firstly, it introduces the phenomenon of Web 2.0 and its main characteristics: technologies, applications, and user roles. It then provides an overview of its adoption, value chain and business models, before moving to an analysis of its drivers, industrial impact and disruptive potential. Finally, the report assesses the position of the European Web 2.0 applications industry and its prospects for growth. "Web 2.0" is defined as a set of applications (blogs, wikis, social tagging, social gaming etc.), technologies (including AJAX, syndication feeds, mash-ups, and wiki engines) and user roles. The most pertinent characteristic of Web 2.0, as compared to the previous "version" of the Web, is that it enables users to become, with little effort, a co-provider of content. The available figures about recent Web 2.0 diffusion deliver two messages. Firstly, its spread is extremely rapid by any standards, although not uniform for all its applications. Secondly, the intensity with which users participate differs a lot. At the centre of the Web 2.0 value chain are the providers of Web 2.0 applications who may be pure Web 2.0 players or traditional players from related industries such as the media and Web 1.0 industry. They provide opportunities for users to network and/or to create content. As yet, no dominant revenue model for Web 2.0 content-hosting sites has been established, although advertising is the most common one. The content hosting platforms may in turn choose to remunerate content creators through different revenue-sharing schemes, or simply rely on their voluntary contributions. We discuss four aspects of Web 2.0 which may have a disruptive impact on industry: (1) Providers of Web 2.0 applications are becoming increasingly numerous and large, and contribute to growth and employment. (2) They already constitute an important threat to other industries, in particular content industries. The content industry is responding by diversifying into Web 2.0. (3) Web 2.0 applications and software are being increasingly adopted by the enterprise and public sectors as tools for improving internal work processes, managing customer and public relations, innovation, recruitment and networking. (4) The growth of Web 2.0 leads to a derived demand in the supply of ICT hardware and software. Europe's current position in the supply and development of Web 2.0 applications is rather weak. Although Web 2.0 is used almost as much in Europe as it is in Asia and the US, Web 2.0 applications are largely provided by US companies, while Europe and all other regions are left behind. About two thirds of the major Web 2.0 applications are provided by US companies, with similar shares for revenues, employees, and even higher shares for innovation indicators such as patents, venture capital and R&D expenditures. The corresponding shares for the EU are around 10%. Nevertheless, Europe could have the advantage in some areas of the Web 2.0 landscape, for example social gaming, social networking, and Mobile 2.0.JRC.J.4-Information Societ

R&D Business Investment in the EU ICT Sector

The EU spends only about half as much on R&D in ICT as the US. This holds true both in absolute amounts and relative to the size of the economy. Indeed, the ICT sector alone is responsible for as much of the overall R&D investment gap as all other sectors combined. From the current data analysis, there are no signs of the ICT R&D investment gap closing. At ICT sector level, the R&D investment gap exists partly because the ICT sector is smaller in the EU than in the US and partly because of the lower R&D intensity of the sector in the EU. The lower R&D intensity is, in turn, primarily due to two sub-sectors: computer services and software on the one hand, and electronic measurement instruments on the other hand. On the positive side, and contrary to the rest of the ICT sector, these two sub-sectors also show strong R&D growth in the EU. Company data indicates that EU companies have R&D intensities similar to their US counterparts in every sub-sector, but are concentrated in less R&D intensive sub-sectors (e.g. telecom services). The US companies are also larger and more numerous in most sub-sectors. These data suggest that the ICT R&D gap between the US and the EU reflects, more than anything, a lack of European firms in the ICT sector. Among the member states, Finland and Sweden make the highest R&D effort in this sector, relative to their size. In general, Northern member states invest more than Southern member states, and the Western member states invest much more than the Eastern ones, which display very low levels of ICT R&D.JRC.J.4-Information Societ

RFID: Prospects for Europe: Item-level Tagging and Public Transportation

This report, which is part of the COMPLETE series of studies, investigates the current and future competitiveness of the European industry in RFID applications in general and in two specific cases: item-level tagging and public transportation. It analyses its constituent technologies, drivers and barriers to growth, actual and potential markets and economic impacts, the industrial position and innovative capabilities, and it concludes with policy implicationsJRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

BUSINESS IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF SELF-GROWING ENERGY EFFICIENT SYSTEMS

This paper investigates the business impact of two novel mechanisms that increase the energy efficiency of networks, i.e. sensor network decentralisation and system idle time estimation, which have been developed in the CONSERN project. The analysis consists of two distinct but interrelated phases, the objective of which is to combine a techno-economic analysis of actual gains as contained within the technical KPIs of optimisation techniques, with a strategic analysis of factors promoting or hindering the actual introduction of these mechanisms within mobile business ecosystems. In the first phase, the technical gains of the two mechanisms are translated into an estimation of Operational Expenditure (OPEX) savings for a number of typical configurations. Subsequently, a business impact assessment is performed, in which two commercial deployment modes – an operator based and operator independent mode – are outlined. After having drawn up the business ecosystem for these two deployment models, a number of business opportunities and challenges for the two mechanisms in the different deployment modes are identified using the business model framework developed by Ballon, and a scorecard is used to weigh the importance of the various business model parameters against each other. The paper concludes with some recommendations and steps to mitigate disjunctions and improve synergies between the key stakeholders, constituting a sustainable business ecosystem

The Swedish mobile Internet: A study of entrepreneurship during 1998-2005

This paper addresses entrepreneurship in the emerging Swedish mobile Internet industry. Entrepreneurship is defined as the creation of a new venture. The unique data set underlying this work consists of 249 ventures that were active in the mobile Internet industry during 1998-2004. The entry/exit pattern and their performance in 2000-2004 were studied along with VC involvement in this industry.On a population level, exits were surprisingly few, sales were growing and the number of employees was decreasing. Concerning profits, the population loses enormous amounts of money each year. Venture capital appears to have a rather negative impact on performance initially. However, the VC-backed ventures displayed strong performance improvements at the end of the investigated period

The 2010 Report on R&D in ICT in the European Union

This report is the 2010 edition of a report that is published annually. It presents all the data available on ICT R&D private and public expenditures in Europe, at sector, country and company levels, and from an international perspective (benchmarking). It provides data up to 2007. The second part of the report includes a thematic analysis on ICT R&D internationalisation.JRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

The Socio-economic Impact of Social Computing: Proceedings of a Validation and Policy Options Workshop

This report presents the major outcomes of a validation and policy options workshop on social computing, held at IPTS in Seville, on 26-27 February 2008. It points to a number of relevant issues (including methodological and conceptual ones) that need to be taken into account in a study of the socio-economic impacts of social computing. It argues that there is little room for direct policy interventions in social computing but that framework conditions and impacts at sector-level (e.g. education, government) need to be considered. The report also discusses the future of social computing and the opportunities it offers Europe.JRC.J.4-Information Societ

The Impact of Social Computing on the EU Information Society and Economy

This report provides a systematic empirical assessment of the creation, use and adoption of specific social computing applications and its impact on ICT/media industries, personal identity, social inclusion, education and training, healthcare and public health, and government services and public governance.JRC.J.4-Information Societ

Evolution of Techno-Economic Systems - An Investigation of the History of Mobile Communications

The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of how techno-economic systems emerge and evolve and how such processes can be analyzed. To these ends, the history of mobile communications is investigated, seen as a complex techno-economic system with two rapidly evolving and interacting subsystems - mobile telephony and mobile data communications - which are described, dissected and compared in case studies. An interdisciplinary systems approach to the analysis of techno-economic change is proposed here. Its point of departure is the technical system, i.e. a set of artifact components and relations between them, characterized by sets of functions and properties (technical performance and cost parameters). Key relations between technical systems are complementary and competitive, and can be analyzed in a multi-level framework where the application (system of use) is a key unit of analysis. Linked to the technical systems are co-evolving actor systems (including e.g. buyers, sellers, standards organizations at different levels), technology systems (i.e. knowledge related to the technical systems) and institutional settings. This framework allows analysis of several key aspects in techno-economic change processes, such as the importance of complementary and competing relations, diffusion (including systematic errors in forecasting it), compatibility standardization, the evolution of applications, and convergence processes. The thesis includes a comprehensive and detailed investigation (based on unique access to documentation and interviewees) of the emergence and formation of land mobile telephony in the 1940s and land mobile data communications in the 1980s, as well as their subsequent standardization, diffusion and convergence until year 2001. Focus is placed on the network standards NMT, Mobitex, GSM and UMTS, including complementary systems (e.g. terminals and fixed networks) and competing ones (e.g. AMPS, DataTac, IS-95 CDMA, CDMA2000). Juxtaposing the developments reveals a number of similarities and differences regarding e.g. the characteristics of the applications, diffusion processes, expectations, and standardization processes. Among the main findings is that compatibility standards are crucial for realizing complementarities. Firms\u27 and regions\u27 abilities to influence and promote successful standards affect their competitiveness, notably during competition between incompatible standards. Many findings pertain to diffusion: for instance, diversity of applications slows down the process of generic technical systems diversifying into new applications, and accordingly the diffusion process. In addition, market diffusion does not "take off" or depend on a "critical mass", although this is a common perception; diffusion processes are surprisingly regular. However, expectations and forecasts of growth have been very wrong, with systematic errors and differences between the two cases studied. These differences can partly be explained as underestimations of complementary and competing system interdependencies at multiple system levels. Complementary and competing relations coexist and co-evolve and their relative importance often changes over time. Such relations need to be explicitly recognized when analyzing diffusion, compatibility standardization, convergence and other central techno-economic change processes. Based on these findings, the techno-economic framework is refined and revised