So we got our Bye Bye Facebook event last night. It seems to have rocked the Facebook boat somewhat but a first estimate shows that only some 10000 Dutch FB accounts have been cancelled. Expect some more and also expect some repentants who just felt that after a few days their life seemed strangely empty…
Drones are hot, especially the flying ones. Their greatest benefit is their ability to perform arial surveys at very low cost. Packed with sensors and still evolving in range and size they are loved by information centric organizations. A drone’s ability to carry cargo, however, is still somewhat cumbersome. Information has no weight but physical…
Retail Last year the METISfiles reported on the demise of retail shops in city centers. With consumer e-commerce growth reaching 17% in 2016, and total consumer commerce growing 1.7% traditional commerce is up the creeks. It is not that 1.7% growth in consumer commerce is low, on the contrary, it is a healthy number compared…
Retail has always been a good indicator of the state of the economy and consumer confidence. The economic crisis following the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 saw a sharp decline in consumer household spending on consumer goods. Even in 2015 spending on consumer goods was still 4% under the all time high of €…
In our series on the future work we watch the development of innovative robotized functions hitting the market. So far we covered the robotized prison guard, burger flipper, order pickers and cars as innovations where robot technology redefines an existing function. But innovations that really captures people’s imagination are drone based appliances; for the sake…
n TV series “Person of Interest” protagonist Finch has built a software system that is capable of predicting crime by combining artificial intelligence (AI) with access to all kinds of public and private data. He has designed the machine code in such a way that it values the life of individuals. The Machine has been…
Last May the Business Software Alliance (BSA) released its biennial global report on software piracy. The report gives an overview of the level of PC software piracy in 116 markets (111 countries plus 5 rest-of-regions) by calculating the piracy rate per country. The piracy rate is defined as the share of unlicensed software packages in…
Not so long ago triple play (3P) sounded like the ultimate thing. Subscriptions that offered the combination of Internet access, TV and telephony in one bundle were the way to go. The ease of doing businesses, the discount, and just one provider to complain to. Obviously, not long after, 3P providers started to offer quadplay…
In our series on the Dutch Digital Economy we have so far analyzed the Dutch B2B and B2C e-commerce market. The total business conducted in the B2B and B2C commerce in 2014 equaled € 1015 billion of which 8,7% can be attributed to e-commerce. But when analyzing e-commerce there are a few other markets that…
With Jack Dorsey back in the saddle Twitter is trying to get some grip on its future. Not a small effort for Dorsey as he is also CEO of Square who just announced its IPO. But Twitter needs quite a bit of work as investors are not really happy with how things are going. Dick…