NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 10 December
10-12-2008
by Emmet Cole
Broadband adoption continues to rise in Ireland | Computer mouse celebrates the big 40
Seventy percent of all Irish households -- with at least one member aged between 16 and 74 -- have a home computer, compared to 55 percent of similar households in 2005, according to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The statistics reveal that 43 percent of households now use broadband, compared to 7 percent in 2005. The CSO figures also show that 96 percent of Irish businesses with 10 or more employees are now connected to the internet. Access to the internet using broadband rose sharply in 2008, with 83 percent of enterprises now having a broadband connection, compared to 68 percent in 2007 and 61 percent in 2006.
Meanwhile, emerging economies are moving up the broadband ranks, according to research from market analysts Point Topic. China is now the largest broadband country in the world, with 81 million subscribers at the end of September and has pushed the US into second place. Brazil is a new entry in the top 10 broadband countries in the world, adding over 600,000 new lines in the past year to move ahead of Spain and within striking distance of Canada which it will pass before the end of the year, according to the report. In the 12 months to the end of September 2008, 64 million broadband lines were added around the world, an increase of 19.2 percent, bringing the total to just under 400 million.
BioMerieux, a medical diagnostics provider, has announced the opening of an office in Dublin to support its Irish customer base of clinical, food and pharmaceutical laboratories. The office will be located at NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre at University College Dublin. Drawing on the microbiology expertise available through the UCD Centre for Food Safety at the university's Veterinary Sciences Centre, BioMerieux plans to provide training programs, seminars and 'hands-on' workshops as part of its collaboration with microbiologists throughout Ireland.
Computer games retailer GameStop is opening its 11th Dublin store on Thursday, 11 December in The Pavilions Shopping Centre, Swords. Despite the economic recession, GameStop is continuing to expand its network of stores across Ireland and recently opened new stores in Wilton, Cork and Limerick city centre. The company currently has 58 stores across Ireland and the UK.
The European Commission has published a set of guidelines to accelerate the roll-out of mobile TV across Europe, in an effort to promote competitive mobile TV services in the region. Authorisations from member states for mobile TV services are needed before any commercial launches by operators. To date, only a handful of member states, including Austria, Finland, France and Germany have adopted legislation for new mobile TV services. Mobile TV revenues worldwide are expected to reach more than EUR7.8 billion in 2013, according to the Commission.
Adult video chat services are expected to be the largest contributors to a mobile adult market that will be worth USD4.9 billion by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research. The value of the adult video chat market will pass the USD1 billion mark by 2011, the authors predict. Total revenues for 2008 of around USD2.2 billion are also predicted -- 3.5 percent below Juniper's previous forecasts.
Finally, put on a party hat and celebrate the 40th birthday of the humble computer mouse. First unveiled by Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) in 1968, the original mouse was made of wood and had a single button. It wasn't until 1972 that Xerox PARC came up with the ball mouse, that's so familiar to us today.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 