I am easily impressed. Here I was, watching the NCAA tournament online, thinking, “This is brilliant, I can watch live basketball without having cable.” All because of my magical broadband connection provided by Cox Communications. Of course, the game looked like it was being played by pixilated Lego-men, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was being able to watch my beloved Kentucky Wildcats without Greg Gumble and the CBS crew switching back and forth between games as if a squirrely 3 year-old was holding the remote.
However, when I recently received my bill for my broadband services I decided not to just blindly pay the balance. I wanted to understand the brilliance for which I was paying. Cox lists its fastest broadband service for $58.95 on its website. That is about $9.75 more than the national average, according to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development). This did not strike me as odd because I live in San Diego, where everything is three times more expensive. As I dug deeper, what I found frustrated me to no end, and after you read this you just might be as frustrated as I am!
First, Americans pay an average of $49.25 for broadband service. This ranks 20th out of the 30 countries that are members of the OECD. Greece has the cheapest broadband with an average monthly service costing the consumer $27.72, while Turkey is the most expensive with an average of $135.36. Fifteen countries have averages of less than $40.00. Relative to the developed world, broadband is expensive in America.
Don’t mistake cost for quality because the US ranks 23rd in advertised broadband speed. The average advertised download speed in the States is around 14618kbs/s. That number is very misleading because the FCC estimates that households are lucky to get half of the advertised speed. Half! That means we are downloading at around 7000kbs/s. That number ranks 29th, just ahead of Mexico (2514kbs/s) and just behind the Irish (6008kbs/s). There are select places in this country that have broadband speeds of 51200kbs/s (50mbs/s), similar to those found in most countries. However, that costs the consumer about $145 a month in the US. That would make it the most expensive internet in the world! This is when I started getting frustrated.
Is this even broadband anymore? FCC regulations dictate that in order for something to be considered broadband it must have a download speed of 768kbs/s. So as long as you are getting that, a company and call it broadband, and charge you accordingly. Dial up internet speeds max out at 56kbs/s, but since the service can be bought for under $5.00 a month it is cheaper per kb of speed in a lot of places.
Americans have little choice in the matter. Most cities have only two broadband providers, the phone company or the cable company, which creates a duopoly, and some homes are not even equipped with the infrastructure to offer both. Yes, that is correct; America doesn’t have the infrastructure to offer competitive broadband prices. Companies in other countries were willing to share the cost of building the required infrastructure while competing for customers. But since the phone companies and cable companies seem to lack any sort of quality customer service I can see why they don’t want to compete.
Being deceived is frustrating, but what really bothers me is the fact that we are missing out on a number of opportunities simply because our internet is too slow. There is a whole host of applications that we cannot use. Remote surgery, video instant messaging, and streaming HDTV are just a few, and I am sure there are many more applications in education, energy management, health care, and public safety that I am not thinking about.
Google wants to know what can be achieved with faster internet. That’s why, in one lucky town, they are going to build an experimental fiber network that supports speeds up to 102400kbs/s, (100mbs/s) just to see what kind of applications can be developed when bandwidth is no longer a constraint. There was no shortage of volunteers, either. 1100 towns applied, and over 200,000 individuals wrote letters to Google explaining why their town should be chosen.
When I read the 2020 estimate, which is in the most recent stimulus bill, I was beyond frustrated and decided to test my own internet connection. My download speed clocked in at a pathetic 4985 kbs/s, and I realized America might have the worst internet in the world. You can check yours here.
I apologize for sounding defeated, but our internet is slow and expensive and there is not a thing we can do about it. The government estimates that by around 2020, 100 million homes will have broadband speeds of 100mbs/s. That’s great; we have to wait a decade to catch up to the rest of the world, and how fast will their internet be by then? My bitterness began to swell, and it got worse when my pixilated Wildcats lost a hard fought game to the West Virginia Mountaineers in the Elite Eight. The video of that game could only be appreciated by the likes of Cubist painters Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque. Ignorance is bliss, and I understand that now. I should have just blindly paid the balance.
Hi everyone! My name is Trisha Weinberg and I just joined the gap intelligence team as an intern. I’m so excited to have found an opportunity like this to work in the field of public relations. I am currently a communication major hoping to transfer to UCSD this fall. If there is one thing I’ve learned so far about finding the perfect career, it’s that the key to success is gaining experience. I’m not sure what I want to do for a living and I don’t quite know when I’ll figure that out, so this internship is an ideal way to help me on my journey.
I’m originally from San Diego, a city I’ve come to love and appreciate so much more as I’ve gotten older. Maybe it’s because the majority of my time in LA for school last year was spent sitting in my car stuck in traffic!All I can say is I’m happy to be home; San Diego has everything I need and more.
In my spare time I like to read, shop, eat, attempt to cook, watch movies, and the list goes on. I have recently discovered the real joys of college thanks to my new favorite class, Wines of the World. I’m nowhere near a true aficionado but I have my hopes up.I also enjoy spending time with my friends and family as well as meeting new people and going new places. I love traveling and would eventually like to set out abroad; I’ll go anywhere at this point (preferably a nation with good wine!)
At this point in my life, I just want to have fun with everything I do and be happy.I am very lucky to have found an internship here at gap intelligence so I only hope I will bring as much to this company as much as it gives me!
Hello everyone, my name is Adrienne Akre and I’m the newest intern here at gap intelligence!I’m excited to be here and looking forward to sinking my teeth into this PR thing.I just started my final quarter at UCSD, where I am majoring in sociology.I know, it seems strange that I’m a sociologist interning for a marketing intelligence company, but after spending four years in the field, I’ve decided to give sociology a break.So basically, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do in life.
I found gap through UCSD’s Academic Internship Program and instantly thought it sounded like a fantastic opportunity.I am hoping to learn as much as I can and give as much back to gap as possible.
I was born and raised right here in San Diego.After living in Marin County up in Northern California for a year, I realized that my heart was still in SD and I truly am a So-Cal girl.I live in Coronado with my boyfriend, almost six-year-old daughter (wow, time flies), and three crazy dogs.In my spare time, I like to relax with friends and family and try to get to the beach as much as possible, which is a lot when you live on an island.Much to my boyfriend’s dismay, living in Northern California gave me a taste for Indian food, so don’t be surprised if you catch the faint scent of curry as you pass by me!I’ll make sure to gargle after lunch, though!
Other than that, I’m just so grateful to have been given the opportunity to get my feet wet in the PR and marketing world.I’m thrilled to be here and hope to get to know everyone at gap very soon!
Apple last week launched its much hyped iPad tablet, selling approximately 300,000 units on the first day. The company also announced that at least one book was downloaded within several hours of the purchase of each unit. Several online blogs announced that the iPad would be the eReader market leader and called it the ‘Kindle Killer’. The device may be cool (although I think it is a giant iPod Touch!) and should help people reduce the number of times they switch on their good ole’ PC or notebook for web browsing, the iPad is certainly not a ‘Kindle Killer’. The technical reason for this is the iPad’s panel. The iPad features a 9.7-inch IPS LED display versus the commonly used e-ink panel in most eReaders. If you have not seen an eReader until now, an e-ink panel looks almost exactly the same as a printed page and has no backlight. What this means is that the device does not produce any glare, allowing one to read even in bright sunlight and making the panel easy on their eyes. However, unlike the backlit iPad, eReader users would still need to switch on their reading light if they were to read at night, which they would do anyway if they were reading an actual paper book. The iPad also gains an upper-hand when it comes to reading color e-content. e-ink panels currently lack support for color and only allow users to read in black and white, thus not being the ideal choice for reading magazines. The nascent e-ink technology also lacks the fast processing speed of the iPad. However, companies are working towards developing much improved and faster e-ink panels and these disadvantages are expected to be minimalized by the end of the year.
Can you do this with the iPad?
Other than the lack of an e-ink panel, there are certain other attributes of the iPad that make it less comparable to eReaders. The 24 ounce iPad weighs a good six ounces more than the 9.7-inch Kindle or twice as much as Sony’s Daily Edition. This could lead to increased strain when reading for long hours, while holding the iPad with one hand. At the time of the iPad’s launch, Steve Jobs announced that consumers could take a flight to Japan and use the iPad without recharging it, so an iPad’s battery would last approximately ten hours. Now ten hours sounds great in comparison to a netbook or a laptop, but it is less impressive when compared to 2 weeks or 336 hours of battery life provided by most standard eReaders.
Most recent surveys also confirm that a majority of expected iPad owners are mainly going to use the device for mobile productivity purposes. According to separate surveys from Comscore and ChangeWave Research, only 37 percent of people are going to read books on the iPad, while surveys from CNET and PriceGrabber.com put that number at an even lower 20 and 13 percent, respectively. Although the 300,000 users who have already bought the device and others who are going to buy it will surely help drive e-content, the iPad is expected to be mainly used for web browsing, checking emails, and entertainment purposes. With that said, the ‘cool factor’ associated with the Apple brand, the device’s multifunctional capabilities, and the company’s loyal core consumer base will continue to drive sales for the iPad, while taking some business away from dedicated eReaders.
As mentioned, the iPad offers far more capabilities than a standard eReader and certainly brings diversity to the eReader shelf, thus increasing competition in the still relatively uncompetitive market. Although Amazon has yet to officially release sales figures for its Kindles, the e-commerce giant is estimated to hold a majority share of the eReader market, which is likely to go down in several months due to the imminent diversification of the market. It is difficult to imagine that many consumers who own an iPad, including the 300,000 that purchased the device on Saturday, would also invest in a dedicated ebook reading device. The iPad will likely appeal more to the tech savvy population, people looking to replace netbooks, and the magazine and news reading population, while the ‘Kindle’ will continue to be used by reading enthusiasts. The iPad is the jack of all trades, being able to offer a little bit of everything to consumers, but the Kindles of the world are still the masters for ebook reading. I can best relate this to the cricket world (for those not familiar with cricket, it is similar to American Baseball!). Chris Cairns was the best all-rounder, but batting is still synonymous with Sachin Tendulkar.
With the official onset of the spring season and semester, gap intelligence’s internship program is in full swing again!The department consists of two new enthusiastic and bright interns, Adrienne and Trisha (check out their blogs!), who will help to manage the public relations department here at gap.
gap intelligence’s internship program was first launched about a year ago.Now, in its second year, the interns are taking on more responsibilities and coming up with creative ways to help gap intelligence bloom.Like the Iris and Daffodil buds pushing up through the dirt, the PR department has grown into a full garden of its own.
You can expect to see more buzz circling around the highly-anticipated new Data Center Version 3 (DCV3), which will be jam-packed full of new goodies such as a quick stat section, news articles, a comments section, product life cycle tracking, and the freedom to contact any gap intelligence analyst with the push of a button.
Socially, gap intelligence’s Twitter site will be fluttering about with interesting industry-related facts, while gap intelligence’s Facebook will be getting a lot more company face-time as well…no pun intended.
gap intelligence’s internship program isn’t about coffee runs, faxing or filing, but instead focuses on the company’s PR initiatives and the interns themselves.Our goal is to give our interns valuable experiences as well as allow them to grow individually and professionally as they make valuable contributions to our company.
Our internship program is off to a fresh start this quarter and we are excited to welcome Adrienne and Trisha to gap intelligence, and look forward to working with each of them!
To check out gap intelligence’s posts, please visit our social media sites:
Living in the age of pervasive social-networking, I take a small amount of personal pride in still living a relatively detached life. Sure, I’ve got a Facebook, I’ve got a Myspace (but who uses that anymore?), a LinkedIn, and a Tumblr, upon none of which I am particularly active.
I understand the appeal of social-networking sites and services. It is fun to hop online and waste 5 hours reading every mundane thought that my friends post on Facebook. But try as I might (and I do try), I just can’t seem to sink my teeth into it. I miss the mystery that comes with catching up with an old friend. It feels like these days there is less and less reason to ask someone what they’ve been up to or how their weekend was. I already know. I read about it on Facebook.
Going against almost everything I just said, I have taken to the iPhone/iPod app Foursquare with reckless abandon. All the application does is broadcast your location to your Foursquare friends, your Twitter, your Facebook, or to no one if you like. The purpose of the application is to let your friends know where you are, and serves as an implied invitation to come and join the fun!
The application is organized by city and uses GPS to identify your location in order to list “venues” nearby. Once you find the listing for the venue you’re at, check-in! Checking-in sends an alert to your Foursquare friends letting them know your location. There is also a point system and badges to earn, which makes the application feel like a game. Bonus!
The reason that I really enjoy Foursquare is that it ultimately works to facilitate face-to-face interaction. Enjoying the company of friends in real-life is always better than hanging out online.
Does it feel a little bit like stalking? Yes. Knowing when and where my friends go for their morning coffee is a strange topic for an alert. You take the boring with the fun though. Those same coffee-loving friends check into more exciting places, too.
Because it seems I don’t have a choice about being in constant contact with my friends and family, I have decided to at least adopt a method of connectivity that leads me to their presence, rather than their persona.
Last Friday, the Los Angeles Times featured a faux-cover with a HUGE picture of Johnny Depp as the Madhatter in promotion of the opening of Alice in Wonderland.If this isn’t advertising, I don’t know what is.To take out a full-color ad creating a cover wrap for the newspaper is big-doings for Disney, who must have some faith that the print media will reach audiences.
We can all admit that LA is a world of its own.What we think of as a normal size billboard is barely comparable to the city’s gargantuan displays that border its roads.With that in mind, this type of advertising would probably only happen in The City of Angels.Nevertheless, Disney is relying on the old school newspaper as one of its many advertising avenues for what proved to be an absolute hit.Alice in Wonderland became the best March release in history and biggest 3D movie ever, grossing $116.3 million during opening weekend!It’s doubtful that Disney’s advertisement in the LA Times alone made the movie move pass Avatar in its opening weekend, but it is also doubtful that Disney would spend somewhere in the range of $700,000 on something that didn’t specifically go toward its bottom line.
Yes, newspapers are suffering throughout the United States and around the world.But, the Alice in Wonderland advertisement shows that there is still a pulse for the newspaper industry. While the main objective of this ad was to entice people to go see the movie, it may have also helped sell newspapers, which ads rarely do.It would not be surprising if little Susie saw the front cover, begged her mother to buy it for her so she could hang it on her wall and cherish it (or have nightmares) for years to come.There are plenty of people that love the feel of newspaper, and yes, even that the ink gets all over your hands – although I can’t relate to that one!
The U.S. newspaper industry lost $7.5 billion in advertising revenues during 2008 according to the Newspaper Association of America.Historically, newspapers thrived on their advertising revenues.Without them, the papers can’t exist, at least not in the form they do today.
The Los Angeles Times took a concept developed on the web and moved it to print, something that is typically done in the opposite direction.The LA Times differentiated itself with this innovative ad and Disney debuted a new type of advertising while launching what will prove to be one of the biggest movies of the year.
While this is an amazing effort by the LA Times in offering innovative advertising options, the newspaper industry is expected to continue to decline.Even more reason to buy them while you can!Way to go LA Times and Disney – extending the life of the newspaper industry one movie advertisement at a time!
Disclaimer: Yes, I am the print media analyst at gap intelligence
One year ago last week, gap intelligence’s Market Intelligence reports included an industry news brief revealing that two thirds of all former Circuit City customers planned to go to Best Buy and Walmart for their future electronics purchases. An understandable, but still immense, 55 percent of Circuit City shoppers planned to make future purchases at Best Buy, while a respectable 11 percent of shoppers expected to direct future CE purchases to Walmart locations. Assuming that a similar portion of former CompUSA shoppers were already transitioning to Best Buy and Walmart, 2009 stood to be a banner year for the retail giants’ consumer electronics sales, regardless of the economy.
Although Best Buy and a number of other retailers certainly benefited from the recent channel consolidation, the redistribution of Circuit City and CompUSA’s sales has been far from one-to-one. It turns out that much of Circuit City’s $11.7 billion 2008 revenue and CompUSA’s $4 billion-plus 2006 revenue was also consolidated – leaving surviving retailers and CE manufacturers searching for where at least $5 billion in annual electronics sales went.
One could easily attribute 2009’s reduced electronics spending to the ongoing recession and they would be at least partially right. However, I believe Systemax CEO Gilbert Fiorentino has tracked down this missing electronics demand, and interestingly enough, it appears that it never left – it’s just not being addressed at the same rate as before. In a recent retailer roundtable discussion Mr. Fiorentino cracked open his Marketing 101 textbook and explained this phenomenon in the simplest terms. With the exit of CompUSA and Circuit City went $800 million in annual advertising, roughly 25,000 relatively knowledgeable sales associates, and nearly 800 retail locations, all of which in their own way spurred demand. To borrow Staples’s long-retired slogan “It’s that easy.”
The good news for CE manufacturers and retailers is that the potential electronics spending ceiling just increased significantly. It’s just a matter of creating a need in the minds of consumers, providing inviting and convenient locations to shop, and staffing these locations with a knowledgeable and incentivized sales staff. These are not new ideas and can certainly be done again.
So now the question is: Who is going to go out and make this happen?
Gilbert Fiorentino
Said this:
“You know how important advertising is – people think they need what they are told they think they need. It wasn’t just pent-up demand in a world where a guy woke up in the morning and said, “I want to go buy a laptop” or “I want to go buy a TV.”
Don Draper
Said this:
“The most important idea in advertising is “new.” It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion.”
I have long been bullish on the impact that the smart phone / device industry would have on printing. Many, many of my counterparts believe that the iPhone, anDroid, iPad, and Microsoft’s upcoming Digital Journal will eliminate the need to print. I, on the other hand, honestly believe that we are not installing hundreds of millions of smart phones across Earth, but we are actually installing hundreds of millions of little computers that will one day need to print. The need to print from a smart device will come naturally, much like how printing developed around 5 – 8 years after the birth of the personal PC. Early personal computer users were first in “shock and awe” around their new found device (like your iPhone) and it took some time for users to generate printing needs for software developers to address.
They just haven’t found a need to print……yet. It will come.
Take for example Microsoft’s new Digital Journal, a product coming out later this year that I really, really, want. The journal will replace my $1.50 composition notebook that I take to meetings. Questions: Where is the opportunity for me to generate prints with my composition notebook? Where are the opportunities for me to generate prints with my Digital Journal? I agree.
Just to recap, gap intelligence is a market intelligence company that helps manufacturers of imaging and printing products stay on top of their markets.We function as the “eyes and ears” in the marketplace for our clients and follow products, pricing, promotions, advertisements, specifications, end-caps, and POP stickers in every possible channel.
Through our first seven years, gap intelligence has stuck to the imaging and printing industries, following everything from ink tanks, paper, laser printers, digital cameras, and walk-up copiers.2010 marks a significant change in our coverage as we have expanded outside of the printing and imaging space.
To kick off the New Year, gap intelligence was thrilled to announce the launch of its e-Reader market intelligence service.We are the very first research firm to employ a dedicated analyst following the small nuances of the e-Reader market – capturing tactical marketing intelligence information, finding insight and strategy from the data, and presenting our information in very usable formats.If you haven’t heard, e-Readers have quickly become a mainstream consumer electronics item and may do to the book industry what the iPod did to music.Our constant market tracking and intelligence services will guide e-Reader makers to make smart decisions now to thrive in what will be a highly competitive and turbulent market.
For the second quarter, gap intelligence is thrilled to announce its first market intelligence services that cover the mobile computing industries.We are now tracking notebooks, netbooks, and tablets in all shapes and sizes – desktop replacement, thin and light, touch enabled tablets, and even Apple’s iPad.For those of you in the computing industry who may not have heard of gap intelligence, I say to you “Congratulations!”You can now see your market in detail never before offered and receive support from a team of analysts who will give you the insight needed to make smart business decisions.
For you lucky mobile computing manufacturers, you now have access to the service and support that gap intelligence delivers on these product categories:
Mobile Computing
- e-Readers
- Digital Frames
- Projectors
- Inkjet Printers
- AiO & Fax Machines
- B&W Laser Printers
- Color Laser Printers
- Ink & Photo Supplies
- Print Media
- Digital Cameras
- Copier / MFP
- Total Cost of Ownership
- European Price Monitoring
- Brazil, Russia, China Price Monitoring
You can expect to see more buzz circling around the highly-anticipated new Data Center Version 3 (DCV3), which will be jam-packed full of new goodies such as a quick stat section, news articles, a comments section, product life cycle tracking, and the freedom to contact any gap intelligence analyst with the push of a button. 
