September 2013

Consumer demand for digital learning games and simulations is steadily increasing and expected to rise, a recent report concludes. But that level of interest in using games and simulations does not appear to be as evident in K-12 schools, according to the lead researcher for the study.

The boom in the use of mobile technologies in recent years is a major reason the global market for learning games and simulations is expanding—and likely to continue to do so—during the next several years, according to the analysis by Ambient Insight, a market research firm, which has reported extensively on global trends in education purchasing. Worldwide revenues for game-based learning in 2012 totaled $1.5 billion, in US dollars, and are expected to grow to $2.3 billion by 2017, an 8 percent increase based on the five-year compound annual growth rate, the report says. In North America, the expected growth rate over the next five years for all game-based learning is 10.1 percent, and for mobile “edugames,” it is 15.3 percent. Ambient evaluated simulation-focused learning separately from games-based learning and found that the market for simulations is even bigger—nearly $2.4 billion last year, with growth projected to be 23 percent, to $6.6 billion, by 2017, also based on the compound annual growth rate, which is meant to calculate the growth of investment over time.

Verizon Wireless believes that competitors like Sprint, which offers unlimited data plans to customers for the life of their phone line, will eventually have difficulty maintaining that promise to customers. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs 22nd Annual Communacopia Conference, Verizon Communications Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said that with traffic on the networks steadily increasing there is going to be a point where operators hit a ceiling in terms of available bandwidth.

"If you are allowing unlimited, you will run out of gas. It's physics," he said. McAdam also said that he believes Verizon, which has always used network quality to differentiate itself from its competitors, will continue to lead on that front. Specifically, he said that 4G is not the end of the lifecycle of the network and he hinted that 5G is coming. "5G is video," he said, adding that there is still a lot of room for growth on the 4G network. McAdam said that while there is demand for a business model in which the content providers pay for their content to be distributed over the wireless network, he said that he thinks it will be at least two years before that model actually becomes a reality in the marketplace.

Aereo — which has drawn the legal ire of networks for providing their content via tiny antennas — has been painted as a potential killer of the television and cable industries. But the way Chet Kanojia, the founder and CEO of the company sees it, Aereo doesn’t pose much of a threat to those industries — because they’re providing enough of a threat to themselves if they don’t adapt to the changing habits of consumers.

Aereo, already in a handful of cities, including New York and Boston, allows consumers to bypass cable by hooking up to the company’s network of mini-antennae to receive, free, basic broadcast television. Dragged into court by ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox, it so far appears to be prevailing. He also opined that anyone who thinks viewers are excited about waiting to see their favorite programs at a particular time on a particular night, interrupted by commercials, is “delusional.” “People want choice, people want simple,” Kanojia said — and they don’t like to pay bills.

In what could be the toehold that Facebook has been looking for, the giant social network and other websites banned in China may be accessible in a free-trade zone that is being set up in Shanghai, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.

China's first free-trade zone will allow the access in a rare exception to strict government control of the Internet, the Hong Kong newspaper reported. The report, citing unnamed government sources, said authorities would also welcome bids from foreign telecommunications firms for licenses to offer Internet services in the trade zone, an area established in July that covers less than 20 miles.