Teleconferencing just keeps on booming.
Reluctant to fly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many businesses opted for conferencing rather than traveling. They’ve grown quite comfortable with the change.
A market research report from Frost & Sullivan notes that for 2003 teleconferencing produced $2.5 billion in revenues, which grew to nearly $2.9 billion in 2004 and about $3.2 billion this year. By 2010, the researchers are projecting almost $5.4 billion.
What’s driving this growth now isn’t so much a fear of flying as the Web conferencing aspect that enables people to present information visually as well as orally, said Scott Etzler, president of InterCall Inc., a Chicago-based subsidiary of West Corp.
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“It’s not just about saving money for air travel as much as it is about improving productivity,” Etzler said. “People use the Web for PowerPoint presentations, they take questions. Conferencing has the feel of a face-to-face meeting.”
While Internet telephony and free calling from services like Skype could present a challenge to the growth of traditional teleconferencing, Etzler said it hasn’t posed a problem so far.
“People in business want ease of use and reliability,” he said. “People may talk about Skype–I’ve used it myself–but it still isn’t there yet for full reliability and ease of use.”
Voice over Internet protocol technology is improving and advancing, Etzler said, and InterCall does offer some VoIP products.
“We’ll play in that space,” he said.
Video conferencing is growing, Etzler said, but at a slower pace than audio and Web conferencing.
“Video can be important for international conferencing, especially for cultures where face-to-face contact is important,” he said. “But when you look at ease of use and reliability, video still has a ways to go.”
Gadgets galore: No matter where they live, people seem to love gadgets.
But their appeal seems to vary by geography and across cultures.
Market research from Parks Associates tried to quantify this by devising an index called Global Digital Living, or GDL. The researchers surveyed more than 10,000 households in 13 countries, asking what kind of high-tech toys they used and what they did with them.
It then ranked countries according to GDL and found, not surprisingly, that people in Korea and Taiwan are even more found of gadgets than Americans.
Taiwan had a GDL rank of 8.7, followed by Korea (8.4) and the United States (8.1). Canada (8.0) was close behind, and then Japan (7.9).
Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Italy were bunched together in the middle, with rankings from 7.0 down to 5.3. At the bottom of the heap were China (2.9) and India (1.3).
Individual tastes from one country to another vary more widely than the index numbers might indicate. Americans have a great affection for technology associated with television, such as digital video recorders and digital cable, the survey found.
The Koreans and Taiwanese, on the other hand, showed more affinity for computer-related technology. Japanese led the world in finding ways to use mobile phones that go beyond talking to one another.
“Each nation has particular strengths and weaknesses in terms of technology adoption,” said John Barrett, research director at Parks Associates. “Canada, for instance, is a very impressive market for home networking, while Japan is the undisputed champion for mobile phones. Over half of Japanese households use mobile phone features like e-mail or photo messaging every month.”
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