timone NetMarketing
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Marketing nei new media e nelle tecnologie elettroniche


No. 34 – May 29, 1999

 

 

loghino.gif (1071 byte) 1. Editorial: Which "literacy"?

For quite a while I've been uncomfortable with discussions about "computer literacy". What's generally meant (and practiced) is a rather poor way of handling education and familiarization with new technologies. People are treated as "illiterates" or as dumb "outsiders" to be forced into an unfamiliar culture. This hostile and pedestrian approach to training leads many bright people to stay away from computers (and the net); or, even worse, to feel uncomfortable and depressed when they try to become "literate".

I'm reading a new book, on which I shall comment again in another issue, because it explains the reasons behind the poor quality of information technology: The inmates are running the asylum by Alan Cooper , a well-known and experienced programmer. Most devices we use nowadays, he reminds us, are computers: and that's why anything from an alarm clock to a car alarm behaves in such a whimsical manner as to confuse even a technical wizard such as the author of this book.

After an extended explanation of why electronic technology in incompatible with human beings, Alan Cooper also tells us what computer programmers and software houses mean by "literacy". In what he calls the "euphemism pyramid", they divide users in three categories:

Power users
Computer literate users
Naive users

"Power users", he says, are simply apologists; techno-enthusiast who take complications as a challenge and enjoy tinkering with malfunctions. Of course these are the people that interact most often with the software manufacturers and programmers, who are led to believe that technomaniacs are a relevant segment of the market.

"Computer literate users" are victims. They've been hurt so many times that the scar tissue is thick enough so they no longer feel the pain. They are forced, by the needs of their job or by sheer habit, to waste time and energy, to learn absurd procedures, to cope with unnecessary routines, to live with the daily problems of messy software and unreliable hardware. Most people don't even realize how hard they are working to compensate for the shortcomings of a software-based tool.

"Naive user" is industry code for "stupid, incompetent user". And certainly these people are made to feel stupid, but they are not. It's the bad design of the interaction that is at fault. The apologists in the computer industry dismiss naive users as not significant, but that flies in the face of good sense. Why would a vendor write off the lion's share of the market? Because it removes the blame for failure from the executives and software engineers and places it squarely onto the shoulders of the innocent users.

The problem with these definitions is that they seem to be accepted not only by the software engineers and manufacturers, but also by the media, the educators and general opinion. So the "literate" victims suffer submissively and the "naive" users feel guilty. They put the blame on themselves: I'm told this damned thing is "user friendly, so I must be stupid. So they either give up (I'm not good enough for this stuff) or they inflict upon themselves the painful treatment that will make them "literate" slaves.

There is only a small minority (to which, of course, I belong) that simply won't give up. We are forced into some degree of "literacy", but we use it, as best we can, to force the machine into obedience. We are generally quiet and peaceful people; we don't throw stones at computer stores, we don't set on fire the offices of software houses, we don't march noisily in the streets. We don't smash our computers (or other obnoxious devices) with hatchets, though we are tempted quite often to do so. We "hack" and tinker as best we can and even laugh about our miseries, over a bottle of wine, when we dine with other people of our kind. But at some point we should be heard. If we really want to see the growth of genuine culture (not mere "literacy") in the use of information technology and the net, we need to put machines at the service of people, not vice versa. And we should never allow anyone to treat people as stupid and illiterate "accessories".

In case anyone is interested... I wrote an article in March: Machines aren't "bad" but they are very stupid - in which I explained why I think these problems have a lot to do also with online communication and marketing.

 

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loghino.gif (1071 byte) 2. Mobilemania

My country is known as the land of mobilemania (I call it "cellulitis"). It's the biggest market in Europe for cellular phones, the third largest in the world - at the expense of other communication technologies (as confirmed, once again, by the Eito 99 report - see point 3). One of the peculiarities of the Italian situation is that everyone is complaining about the cost of local phone charges in connecting to the internet (and often that's used as an excuse for not going online) while everyone is happily chatting on a mobile phone and paying the much more expensive long-distance charges even on local calls.

The mobile telcoms are already making a lot of money; but they've come up with an idea that they hope will add to their profits. If Italians are mobile phone addicts, and internet penetration is still low, why not offer net access on cellular phones? There are enthusiastic articles in the newspapers. "Mobile phone access will bring millions to the internet". But is that so?

Almost any idea can be good if applied properly. On a digital platform everything can be connected to everything else. But there is a deep difference between what is technically conceivable and what really works; and an even bigger one between the options that can be offered and those that are really useful to people.

Italians, so far, have been using wireless systems mainly for voice, scarcely for data transmission. Of course that could change; and there are, indeed, useful services that could be managed on a "pocketsize" device such as a cellular phone.

But do we really believe that anyone can write anything longer that an SMS punching a phone dial? Or that anything that isn't "minimal" can be read or seen on the tiny screen of a cellular phone? Of course, one could imagine larger portable phones, with a keyboard, a reasonably sized screen etc. (there are already devices on the market moving in that direction). But that would be a notepad computer in disguise - and probably not a very good one.

The idea of a cellular phone doing too many things is a bit worrying (see the editorial of this issue). The exiting ones already have too many functions, that make them rather difficult and messy to use. It's quite likely that any software developed for this purpose will have the same problems of every other software-based technology; with the additional problem of fumbling with small keys on a small object - and generally in an "outside" environment that doesn't encourage concentration. I've got visions of someone making a cash transfer on his or her bank account while trying to order a pizza, or booking a flight to Tegucigalpa instead of calling a cab. But let's be "apologists" for a moment and assume that the software will work smoothly. What could happen?

It's quite likely that this will be just another passing fad. But if it sticks... there are two possible outcomes. One is quite dangerous: people could learn to do a couple of things with their phone and think "that's the internet". So they would assume they are online and never find out about the hundreds of other things they could do on the net.

Or... the optimistic hypothesis is that mobile phone users could get a taste of the net by using a few simple and useful services, and so become interested in doing more - with the appropriate equipment. But is equipment the problem? According to the best available data, there are many more people owning or using a computer that there are people online. What is missing is good information (not confusing hype) education (not depressing "literacy" efforts) and availability of really good and useful online services.

 

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loghino.gif (1071 byte) 3. Another set of European data

Here's an update on the EITO 99 (European Information Technology Observatory 99) report. We had seen last year's data in issue 18. Of course statistics are always debatable; and especially figures about online "users" are quite uncertain. But I think it's useful to look at another source.

The 430-page Eito report is crammed with figures. I am summarizing here only those concerning general market trends.

According to Eito, this is the size of the combined IT and telecommunications market by large geographic areas (millions of Ecu).

(Eito uses the Ecu conventional currency, which is the same as the Euro but with a difference: in eleven countries the Euro now is an actual currency and exchanges with the "old" currencies are fixed - but not in the rest of Europe. The value of the Euro - or Ecu - fluctuates; currently it's a few cents more than a US dollar).

  1997 1998 % change
over 1995 		% of total Per capita *
United States 476.758 517.537 + 30 36,8 1.934
Europe 405.300 436.952 + 29 30,2 621
Japan 170.020 164.284 + 9 11,4 1.303
Rest of world 291.590 326.110 + 43 22,6 70
World total 1.343.667 1.444.910 + 30   250
* Ecu per inhabitant - 1998 Analysis on Eito 99 data

The "rest of the world" is growing faster than the United States and Europe, but differences remain enormous. Of course some European countries have much higher per-capita investment than the European average.

 

This is the development of the information technology market in sixteen European countries (US added for comparison):

IT mark (millions of Ecu)
  1996 1997 1998 % 98
over 97		 % of
W. Europe		 Per capita
Switzerland 6.818 7.276 7.743 + 6,5 3,8 1.080
Sweden 6.517 6.990 7.743 + 10,2 4 876
Denmark 3.857 4.211 4.556 + 8,2 2 857
Norway 3.126 3.473 3.742 + 8,9 1,9 852
United Kingdom 33.536 34.820 40.442 + 9,8 20 686
Netherlands 8.254 9.113 9.333 + 9 4,8 599
Francia 28.729 31.118 34.176 + 9,8 17,7 583
Finland 2.427 2.688 2.946 + 9,6 1,5 573
Germany 38.105 40.993 44.874 + 9,5 23,3 547
Belgium/Lux. 4.540 5.032 5.541 + 10,1 2,9 522
Austria 3.443 3.773 4.106 + 8,8 2,1 508
Ireland 1.081 1.189 1.312 + 10,3 0.07 360
Italy 14.193 15.093 16.340 + 8,3 8,5 284
Spain 6.000 6.630 7.703 + 9,5 4 196
Portugal 1.131 1.263 1.383 + 9,5 0,7 139
Greece 794 889 992 + 11,9 0,5 94
Western Europe 162.553 176.506 193.044 + 9,4   428
Total Europe 174.908 190.864 206.647 + 8,3   294
United States 262.421 291.313 319.297 + 9,6   1.193
Analysis on Eito 99 data

The United Kingdom leads over the other "big" European countries, with per-capita investment 18 percent larger than France and 25 percent larger than Germany.

 

This is Eito's report on the telecommunications market in the same countries.

Telecomunications market (millions of Ecu)
  1996 1997 1998 % 98 over 97 % W. Europe Per capita
Switzerland 5.977 6.426 6.895 + 7,5 3,5 962
Norway 2.482 3.016 3.235 + 7,3 1,6 737
Sweden 5.219 5.559 5.949 + 7,0 3 672
Ireland 1.948 2.169 2.431 + 12,1 1,2 667
Netherlands 7.956 8.799 9.662 + 9,4 5 621
Denmark 3.154 3.411 3.065 + 5,7 1,5 576
United Kingdom 29.472 31.441 33.139 + 5,4 16,7 562
Finland 2.421 2.612 2.862 + 9,6 1,4 556
Germany 39.677 41.874 44.166 + 5,5 22,2 539
Belgium/Lux. 4.712 5.173 5.654 + 9,3 2,8 532
France 25.245 27.478 30.206 + 9,9 15,2 515
Austria 3.372 3.731 4.061 + 8,9 0.00 502
Italy 21.958 24.171 27.698 + 14,6 13,9 482
Greece 2.806 3.263 3.835 + 16,3 1,8 354
Portugal 2.602 29.851 3.308 + 10,8 1.07 333
Spain 10.522 11.322 12.417 + 9,7 6,2 315
Western Europe 169.887 183.430 199.086 + 8,0   441
Total Europe 174.908 190.874 206.647 + 8,3   294
United States 262.241 291.313 319.279 + 9,6   1.193
Analysis on Eito 99 data

The two markets have similar development in the more advanced countries, while in Southern Europe IT is smaller than telecommunications. The growth in telecommunications is driven by the expansion of mobile phones.

 

Here is a comparison of the number of phone lines in seven countries.

Telephone lines
(numbers in thousands)
  1997 1998 % change % of
world total		 Per 100
inhabitants
United States 175.996 182.616 + 3,8 21,4 68,2
France 33.733 34.272 + 1,6 4,0 58,5
Germany 45.334 46.448 + 2,5 5,5 56,6
UK 31.597 32.585 + 3,2 3,8 55,3
Japan 63.300 64.566 + 2,0 7,6 51,2
Italy 25.612 26.548 + 3,7 3,1 46,2
Spain 15.854 16.391 + 3,4 1,9 41,7
Europe 287.530 299.305 + 4,1 35,11 42,6
World 797.083 852.411 + 6,9   14,7
Analysis on Eito 99 data

The picture, of course, is quite different in the case of mobile phones.

Mobile phones
(numbers in thousands)
  1997 1998 % change % of
world		 Per 100
inhabitants
Italy 11.730 20.000 + 70,5 6,6 34,8
Japan 28.746 40.000 + 39,2 13,1 31,9
United States 44.093 55.000 + 24,7 18,1 20,1
United Kingdom 8.344 11.300 + 35,4 3,7 19,2
France 5.729 10.500 + 83,3 3,5 17,9
Germany 8.252 13.800 + 67,2 4,5 16,8
Spain 4.337 6.300 + 45,3 2,1 16,0
Europe 60.597 97.913 + 61,6 30,4 13,9
World 205.901 304.380 + 47,8   5,3
Analysis on Eito 99 data

These data confirm the widespread notion of Italy's mobilemania. It's now the biggest market for mobile phones in Europe, with per-capita density higher than the United States and Japan.

Now let's look at online connections. Of course it's always difficult to understand how "users" are counted. Even Eito appears to have changed its criteria since last year's report. But let's assume that, at least, they are using the same counting system for all countries...

"For what it's worth", this is what the report says. Let's start with the same seven countries as in other charts.

Online service users
(numbers in thousands)
  1997 1998 % change % of
world		 Per 100
inhabitants
United States 58.395 72.547 + 24,4 48,9 27,3
United Kingdom 6.198 8.110 + 30,9 5,5 13,8
France 7.038 7.541 + 7,1 5,1 12,8
Germany 5.529 7.297 + 32,1 4,9 8,9
Japan 7.377 9.827 + 33,2 6,6 7,8
Spain 853 1.106 + 29,7 0,8 2,8
Italy 680 1.108 + 62,9 0,8 1,9
Europe 48.905 62.215 + 27,1 42,0 8,9
World 113.301 148.222 + 30,8   2,6
Analysis on Eito 99 data

As in previous Eito reports, France has much higher online activity than appears from other indicators. This is due to the French peculiarity that we have already discussed in other issues: the minitel.

 

Let's look at a graph that compares the use of three communication systems in seven countries.

Three communication systems
(users per 100 inhabitants - 1998)
Analysis on Eito 99 data

In the United States several communication technologies are almost equally developed - with the internet leading over mobile phones and even long-established cable tv. Not so in the rest of the world, where the differences are quite remarkable.

Now let's look in some detail at the situation in Europe. The chart is rather complicated, but it tells an interesting story.

Four communication systems in 22 European countries
numbers in thousands - 1997
  Telephone
lines		 Teleph.
% inhab. 		Cable
TV		 Cable
% fam. 		Mobile
phones		 Mobile
% inhab.		 Online Online
% inhab.
Sweden 6.100 68,5 1.935 47,5 3.187 35,8 1.230 13,8
Norway 2.680 60,9 729 35,8 1.685 38,3 522 12,1
France 33.733 57,7 2.299 9,8 5.792 9,9 7,038 12,0
United Kingdom 31.597 53,6 2.403 9,8 8.344 14,2 6.198 10,5
Finland 2.860 55,8 832 39,1 2.148 41,9 521 10,2
Denmark 3.320 62,9 1.040 43,3 1.489 28,2 540 10,2
Switzerland 4.700 66,2 2.390 79,5 1.044 14,7 606 8,5
Luxembourg 280 67,7 134 92,2 67 16,2 31 7,4
Germany 45.334 55,2 18.500 49,5 8.252 10,0 5.529 6,7
Austria 4.013 49,6 1.080 34,9 1.164 14,4 480 5,9
Netherlands 8.864 56,5 5.787 89,2 1.690 10,8 826 5,3
Ireland 1.460 40,6 585 49,1 510 14,2 157 4,4
Belgium 4.769 46,8 3.650 88,6 983 9,0 403 4,0
Spain 15.854 40,4 1.641 13,5 4.337 11.0 853 2,2
Portugal 4.002 40,4 371 11,3 1.507 15,2 216 2,2
Poland 7.300 18,9 3.000 23,6 832 2,2 687 1,8
Czech Republic 3.277 31,8 880 21,8 524 5,1 164 1,6
Hungary 3.100 30,5 1.240 31,1 703 6,9 147 1,4
Italy 25.612 44,6 52 0,3 11.730 20,4 680 1,2
Greece 5.430 51,7 3 0,1 975 9,3 110 1,0
Romania 3.616 16,0 2.580 34,5 209 0,9 25 0,1
Bulgaria 2.690 32,0 200 6,8 53 0,6 9 0,1
Western Europe 217.386 48,1 43.940 26,1 56.879 12,6 26.539 5,9
Source: Eito 99

The highest density of mobile phones is not in Italy, as some people think, but is Scandinavia; where, as we know, there is also heavy use of the internet. It's no news that cable is strong in the Benelux area. I think this report underestimates online activities in Finland, the Netherlands and Belgium. We have already discussed the impact of the mintel factor in France.

For a simplified visual perception of differences, here is a chart that considers only two communication systems: mobile phones and online.

Online connections and mobile phones
online "users" and mobile telephones per 100 inhabitants - 1997
Note: "Europe" here stands for Western Europe plus Turkey.

Source: Eito 99

In all of Europe (including France, according to more recent data) mobile phones are much more widely spread than online connections . A short-term reversal of this trend seems unlikely.

This is the "global" picture of online connections according to Eito. I think it tends to overestimate Europe.

This is the online situation in Europe - as seen by Eito.

According to this source, 68 percent of all online users in Europe are in three countries (United Kingdom 24 %, France 22 % and e Germany 21 %) that have 28 percent of Europe's population.

If we draw a map of the European Union according to these data, it looks somewhat different from other maps that we had seen.

Online users as % of inhabitants in the European Union
Analysis on Eito 99 data

As I've already said... I'm not comfortable with Eito data for some of the countries. But, while some details don't don't fit with what we learn from other sources, the broad picture is generally the same. The development of online activity is patchy, in Europe as well as worldwide.

 

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List of links

For the convenience of readers that print the text before they read it, here is a list of the links. Only a few this time, because a large part of this issue concentrates on the analysis of one source.

Alan Cooper http://www.cooper.com/design.html
Machines aren't "bad" but they are very stupid http://gandalf.it/offline/off12_en.htm
Eito 99 http://www.eito.com/DEF-EITO.HTM
Analysis of Eito 98 data http://gandalf.it/netmark/netmar18.htm#heading02
Understanding research and surveys http://gandalf.it/netmark/netmar17.htm#heading04
The French peculiarity http://gandalf.it/netmark/netmar8.htm#heading03
Other maps (Europe and world) http://gandalf.it/netmark/netmar27.htm#heading03

 



 

 

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