Digital Lifescapes

Credit scoring is a method that lenders use to predict the probability a borrower or counter-party will default on loans, or incur additional charges for repayment -- also known as measuring credit worthiness. The method is a key tool in making credit affordable for individuals and businesses. It links credit products to risk potential, connecting borrowers to secondary capital markets and increasing the amount of funds available. This securing process establishes risk predictability dependent on a number of factors, determined by financial indicators and other publicly available information reported by the credit bureaus. Credit Score Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, they now forecast credit scoring services will grow by 67 percent to $44 billion by 2028. Juniper anticipates that emerging markets will experience the greatest growth -- projecting the African & Middle Eastern region to grow by 117 percent over the forecast period...

Information technology (IT) investment within the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region is on track to further growth.  IT spending in EMEA is forecast to reach $1 trillion in 2018 -- that's an increase of 4.9 percent from 2017, according to the latest market study by by Gartner. In 2017, however, all categories of traditional IT spending in EMEA under-performed the global averages. According to the Gartner assessment, currency effects played a significant part in the weakness during 2017, and will also contribute to the forecast shortfall in 2018. EMEA IT Sector Market Development "The UK has EMEA’s largest IT market and its decline of 3.1 percent in 2017 impacts the forecast heavily," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner . "Weak Sterling and political uncertainty since Brexit are reducing UK IT spending in 2017, while other major IT markets in EMEA grew steadily." Another significant currency effect is the rapid appreciat...

If you thought that the upside potential for FinTech growth -- and the likelihood of a big disturbance within the banking industry status-quo -- was limited to North American and Western European markets, then you would be mistaken. This very significant intrusion is truly a global phenomena. New research has uncovered data that suggests the FinTech sector in Africa is now poised for exponential and rapid growth that will challenge existing financial services providers, despite the fact that it's in the early stages of adoption relative to the rest of the world. According to a worldwide market study by Frost & Sullivan, the FinTech industry in Africa may experience a similar disruption seen in Australia -- a country with financial services development comparable to South Africa. African FinTech Market Development Outlook A case in point: the financial sector in Australia is set to take $10 billion in revenues away from the big Australian banks and contribute $3 billion ...

Hyperscale public cloud services offer agility, scalability and significant cost benefits that are difficult to achieve in traditional enterprise data centers. These services will serve a strategic role as the foundation for the digital business transformation of the future. At the end of the third quarter of last year, Gartner is predicting a 13.5 percent growth in public cloud services for 2015. This growth is forecast to peak in 2016 and will likely stay constant through 2019, although the actual spend should increase through to 2019. The public cloud computing market is maturing, across the globe. Public cloud services in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is forecast to grow by 19.3 percent in 2016 to reach a total of $880 million -- that's up from an estimated $737 million in 2015, according to the latest market study by Gartner. Public Cloud Service Market Development Moreover, Business Process as a Service (BPaaS), the largest segment of the cloud servic...

Micro-credit, insurance, and simple saving accounts are already making a very positive impact on millions of the world's poor, while also creating new opportunities for innovative mobile network service providers in emerging markets. Both micro-finance providers, and mobile carriers, are driving a surge in financial inclusion for the un-banked populace in developing nations, through the provision of sophisticated mobile finance services, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. Juniper now estimates that micro-finance user numbers in developing regions -- including Africa & India -- will triple from 94 million in 2015 to 283 million by 2020. They found that mobile savings accounts -- such as Safaricom’s M-Shwari and Tigo Tanzania -- had already gained mass adoption in their respective markets, with the mobile network operators benefiting both from reduced churn and from the opportunity to upsell additional content such as micro-insurance and loans. Inde...

Overall worldwide international Internet capacity growth continues to slow, falling from 41 percent in 2011 to 31 percent in 2015. However, even with the declining pace of growth, backbone telecom network operators deployed 43 Tbps of new capacity in the past year alone. According to the latest global market study by TeleGeography , new growth in international Internet capacity connected to Africa continues to outpace that of any other region. Internet access continues to drive local economic development across the African continent. African Internet bandwidth grew 41 percent between 2014 and 2015, and 51 percent compounded annually over the last five years, to reach 2.9 Tbps. Oceania saw the second fastest growth rate of 47 percent per year between 2011 and 2015 to reach 2.1 Tbps, and capacity in Latin America and the Middle East grew 44 percent per year to 20.6 Tbps and 8.4 Tbps, respectively. While international Internet capacity in each of these regions has doubled every tw...

The impact of alternative forms of video entertainment on the traditional pay-TV sector is now very much a global phenomena. What started as a small disruption in North America, with the introduction of Netflix and Hulu service offerings, has evolved into a transformation that reaches far and wide. Over-the-Top (OTT) television and video revenues within the Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMEA) region, which includes nineteen countries, will reach $2.63 billion in 2020 -- that's up from only $52 million recorded in 2010, and the $616 million expected in 2015. According to the latest market study by Digital TV Research, from the $2.21 billion in revenues to be added between 2014 and 2020, Russia is forecast to contribute $795 million, with Turkey bringing in a further $219 million. Russia will remain the largest revenue earner in the region, by a wide margin. "OTT in Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa will still be an immature sector by 2020, although thi...

Smart card technology use-cases typically include the authentication and identification of users across multiple applications and vertical sectors. This technology is most often associated with the financial services, telecom, government and transportation markets, but the application scenarios are evolving as other sectors explore the benefits. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, in 2014 a total of 454 million government ID smart card credentials -- primarily consisting of driver licenses, healthcare, national ID cards, and passports -- were issued, resulting in a year-over-year growth rate of 2.4 percent. Over the past two years the government ID market has been evolving slowly, reflecting short-term expectations. The worldwide market continues to be affected by ongoing prior project delays, along with an overall lack of new projects or contracts awarded in 2014. Russia and Japan placed a hold on their respective smart national ID card projects. Moreover, Fran...

There's a significant mobile technology innovation that was originated where you might least expect it. To date, the most meaningful new financial services offering that was created specifically for delivery over mobile communication networks has occurred outside of the most mature markets. Moreover, as mCommerce via smartphones finally starts to gain traction across a few developed regions, a number of markets in sub-Saharan Africa and emerging Asia have already experienced a different kind of mobile money revolution. The basic mobile phone has enabled individuals in these highly under-banked markets to achieve first-time financial freedom, to the extent that by the end of 2014 more than 15 countries had more people with 'mobile money' accounts than those that had traditional bank accounts. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, the number of mobile money transfers is expected to increase by nearly 150 percent in 2015 to more than 13 billion transa...

As mCommerce services continue to gain new users across developing regions -- such as sub-Saharan Africa and emerging Asia -- the early-adopter nations have experienced a mobile money revolution that has empowered the local economies. While in some early-adopter markets -- such as Kenya and Uganda -- mobile money usage already occurs across more than 50 percent of the adult population, there are still significant sections of the un-banked population it has yet to reach. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, mobile network service providers are now benefiting from the boom in mobile money transfer services -- with $2 billion in revenues forecast for this year and $4 billion annually by 2018. Market Development in Africa The new research points to the African continent as the leading mCommerce market. In fact, several regional mobile network operators -- such as Vodacom Tanzania and MTN Uganda -- are now generating more than 10 percent of their revenues from m...

A positive economic growth outlook for Africa is strongly dependent on improved institutional performance and better governance. GDP growth in Africa in 2015 is forecast at 4.4 percent. Nigeria will be the strongest performer at 6.7 percent growth in 2015, but heavily dependent on natural resources and vulnerable to global demand. Telecom services, and mobile internet access in particular, could help boost the economy. That said, the Nigerian telecommunications market is expected to generate $10.9 billion in 2019, that's up from a total of $9.2 billion in 2013, according to the latest market study by Pyramid Research. Although growth in the market will be slightly reduced in 2015, as the market recovers from the large number of fixed-line disconnections, long-term growth of the telecommunications sector will not to be affected. Nigerian Telecom Market Outlook The telecoms market will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 2 percent over the next five years, with ...

In the course of the past 5 years, the mobile phone device has transitioned from a mechanism for person-to-person communication to a multi-purpose facilitator of essential everyday activities. Making payments has been an integral part of this transition, and the emergence of the mobile wallet is a key to ongoing market development. Juniper Research has found that 1 in 5 mobile handsets will have mobile wallet functionality by 2018 -- that's compared with less than 1 in 10 at the end of 2013. Growth will be driven by two distinct wallet models. In emerging markets, SVAs (Stored Value Accounts) are increasingly enabling first time financial access for unbanked individuals. Empowered by this model, it's anticipated that there will be a surge in deployments across sub-Saharan Africa, developing Asia and Latin America. Meanwhile, Juniper believes that wallet launches across developed markets -- such as North America and Western Europe -- are increasingly expected to feature co...

Emerging markets are the key focal point when considering smartphone and mobile internet access growth. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), in 2013 the worldwide smartphone market surpassed 1 billion units shipped -- that's up from 752 million in 2012. This boom has been mainly powered by consumption in the China market, which has tripled in size over the last three years. Did you know that China accounted for one out of every three smartphones shipped around the world in 2013, equaling 351 million units? But the surge in growth has started to slow as smartphones already account for over 80 percent of China's total phone sales. The next half billion new smartphone customers will increasingly come from poorer emerging markets, notably India and the African continent. "The China boom is now slowing," said Melissa Chau, senior research manager at IDC . "China is becoming like more mature markets in North America and...

The African continent could experience high growth and real socioeconomic advancement -- if only the nations of the region can end the debilitating ethnic wars and outlaw the deep-rooted local government corruption. Meanwhile, telecommunications infrastructure investment continues unabated. By end of 2018, it's estimated that half the African population will be covered by 4G LTE mobile networks, as LTE base station deployment swells at a CAGR of 40 percent over the next five years, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. However, LTE network population coverage will be far from homogenous across the region, with a few countries such as Angola and Namibia nearing the halfway point already, while wealthier nations like Botswana and Gabon have yet to deploy the advanced technology. "Part of the underlying reason for this digital divide is the different types of initiatives driving LTE roll-out," says Ying Kang Tan, research associate at ABI Research . ...

Over the past three years, mobile money services have blossomed across a range of markets in developing Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Encouraged by the astonishing success of Safaricom’s M-PESA in Kenya, other mobile network operators have sought to emulate it by deploying their own range of transfer and remittance options, thereby reaping substantial rewards from their deployments. Nearly 400 million mobile phone users worldwide are expected to use their handsets for mobile money transfer by 2018, that's up from just under 150 million this year, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. Growth is expected to be driven primarily by deployments of domestic money transfer services, with multinational network operators increasingly launching products on a group-wide rather than an ad hoc basis. Findings from the market study stressed the need for mobile network service providers to ensure that support infrastructure -- including an extensive agent network -- neede...

Mobile communication networks have been instrumental in enabling basic economic development at the community and individual level within the African continent. At the end of 2Q-2013, the total mobile phone subscriptions in Africa reached 863 million -- that's a growth of 9.3 percent year-on-year (YoY), which is more than other regions around the world. Africa’s growth trajectory will continue up to 2018, with a CAGR of 6.6 percent, to reach 1.25 billion subscriptions. "What’s more, due to the lower comparative 3G penetration of 13.8 percent in Africa at the end of 2013, we forecast that Africa 3G subscriptions will grow rapidly from 114 million in 2013 to 210 million by 2015," said Marina Lu, research associate at ABI Research . While the vast majority of African countries are still in the process of extending and enhancing their 3G networks, some major African markets -- such as South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria -- have launched 4G networks, notching up 0.2 million ...

Demand for multiple mobile profiles presents sizable opportunities in both developing and developed markets. In emerging markets, using more than one SIM card is common and is mainly driven by bargain hunting. In Botswana, for instance, the number of mobile subscriptions reached 152 percent of the population in 2012, even though only 66 percent of the population used mobile phones -- meaning that most mobile users held more than one SIM card. Savvy mobile network operators that are addressing the demand in three ways: dual-SIM handsets, traveler offers and virtual numbers -- according to the latest market study by Pyramid Research. The recent comprehensive study examined the multiple identities opportunity and how mobile network service providers are addressing it. Incentives for multiple mobile identities are different in developing and developed markets and the study took an in depth look at three main approaches to address the market. This assessment included case studies ...

The mobile internet is like a pathway to progress in the emerging markets. But only three regions of the world -- Latin America, Middle East, and Africa -- will experience mobile internet service revenue with double-digit growth between 2013 and 2018. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, this significant new growth is underpinned by the strong per subscription data consumption increasing at CAGRs of 45-49 percent. In other words, data traffic doubles in less than every two years on average, thanks to the increased availability of affordable smart devices in the near future. In 2018, Latin America and Middle East are expected to see an average user contributing more than 2.5 Gigabytes of traffic per month. Low literacy rate has resulted in the low messaging volume in Africa. However, with the fastest mobile subscription growth and over-the-top applications being less prevalent, it will be the only region to enjoy consistent positive messaging service revenue gro...

Global mobile data service revenue -- including mobile internet and messaging revenue -- will rise by 21.4 percent between 2012 and 2014. It will then represent 40.4 percent of the $1 trillion mobile customers will be spending on their mobile phone services. Thanks to strong commitments to LTE network deployment in Latin America and Africa, not just the developed markets, growth rates in the regions will be substantially faster as the increase in usage outstrips mobile data pricing decline. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, this represents a significant opportunity for regional mobile content and application (app) developers -- which will stimulate a very nascent mobile apps and content market-place. North America will be the first region to see mobile data service revenue eclipse voice revenue in 2016. "By offering unlimited voice calls and texts, while making data the only component in a bundled plan with positive marginal costs to consumers, wireless...

The cellular mobile communications market continues to attract new subscribers within the African continent -- which in turn is helping to fuel regional and local socioeconomic development. In 3Q-2012, the continent's 54 countries and 1.08 billion people have accumulated 821 million mobile network subscriptions -- that's up 16.9 percent year-on-year, resulting in a cellular subscription penetration of 76.4 percent. In the first quarter of 2013, it's now forecast that cellular phone penetration will eclipse 80 percent, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. Given the fact that a significant percentage of prepaid phone users maintain more than one active prepaid mobile subscription to minimize interconnection charges, there is still subscriber growth to be had. "While Western Europe languishes with barely positive overall growth quarter-on-quarter, Africa managed to generate 4.2 percent growth in the same period," said Marina Lu, research asso...