A recent survey of 13,000 consumers in 13 countries found that more than 20 percent of respondents said they spend up to half of their leisure time playing video games. Conducted by market research firm GMI, the poll found 30 percent of those surveyed in India and 20 percent of respondents in Mexico spend up to half of their leisure time playing games, compared with respondents from the U.S. (24%) and Germany (24%). Eighty percent of all consumers surveyed said they believe people will spend more time playing video games over the next ten years. "Relatively unexploited markets in Latin America and in Asia such as India offer new growth to the videogame industry," said analyst Billy Pidgeon. While 58 percent of consumers overall don't think games are a good form of social activity, this thinking is reversed in India and Mexico, where 4 percent and 64 percent of those surveyed, respectively, play games to socialize -- compared with other nations like the Netherlands and France, where only 14 percent and 20 percent of respondents, respectively, said they played games socially.
What was once a simple, unidirectional flow of electricity from centralized power plants to passive consumers is evolving into a complex, intelligent network where millions of distributed resources actively participate in grid operations. This transformation, powered by smart grid technologies, represents one of the most significant infrastructure shifts of our time. It promises to reshape how we generate, distribute, and consume energy. At its core, the smart grid represents far more than mere digitization of existing infrastructure. This bi-directional capability is fundamental to understanding why smart grids are becoming the backbone of modern energy systems, facilitating everything from real-time demand response to the integration of renewable energy sources. Smart Grid Market Development By 2030, smart grid technologies are projected to cover nearly half of the global electrical grid, up dramatically from just 24 percent in 2025. This expansion is underpinned by explosive gr...