While smart metering in North America has a relatively low penetration at present, with just 5.5% of households having installed the technology in 2006, this is set to increase rapidly over the next few years to reach close to 90% of households by 2012. This will be driven by both state/province-level legislation and by the fact that smart meters are already prevalent in residential premises in North America, compared to other markets where the transition of smart metering from commercial and industrial to residential premises is in its infancy.
The pharmaceutical industry has historically used business intelligence (BI) applications in the later stages of a product's lifecycle - after product launch. As the industry begins to re-evaluate existing structures and processes, and shifts towards translational medicine, BI solutions will be evident in earlier stages of the drug development process, starting in R&D and spanning through the clinical phases. Given this, spending on BI solutions by the US and European pharmaceutical industry is expected to grow from $392 million in 2006 to $620 million in 2012.
The product lifecycle management (PLM) market is growing at a rapid rate compared to its enterprise application peers. Growth in software license revenue (excluding maintenance) is expected to grow from $1.9 billion worldwide in 2006 to $4.1 billion in 2012, at a compound annual growth rate of just over 13%. Leading this charge will be the discrete manufacturing industry, which looks set to make significantly more of an investment in PLM than the batch and process industries.
Corporate fuel cards are becoming more popular in Europe, but face numerous competitive challenges from commercial cards. One way to help address this growing threat could be for forecourt retailers to increase the amount of advertising space they commit to fuel card promotions. Currently, just 4.4% of European forecourt advertising space is devoted to fuel cards, compared to around 37% each for fuel and shop products, 12% for loyalty schemes and almost 10% for car wash promotions.
In 2006, the store channel contributed the most to global retail spend, accounting for 87.5%, while internet retail made up 8.6% and catalog retail contributed 3.9%. Although the contribution of non-store channels to overall retail revenues is still relatively low, growth in non-store retail has been impressive in recent years, and this sales channel is expected to continue expanding over the next five years, driven by internet retail. Indeed, by 2012, e-retail could account for 12.9% of total retail spending.
The learning management solution (LMS) has become a mission-critical application for the majority of US higher education institutions, and the utilization of an LMS is expected to become the norm on all but a few campuses. Indeed, over the next few years, institutions are likely both to broaden and deepen their adoption of this solution area, driving increased spending on LMS overall. Given this, spending on LMS by US higher education institutions is expected to grow from $202.4million in 2006 to $334.9 million in 2012, at a compound annual growth rate of 9.2%.