Texte
en discussion
Texte
en discussion
A clear trend
Since 1995, an increasingly dynamic upward trend can be seen throughout Europe in the number of schools and homes equipped with multimedia computer equipment, often connected to the Internet. It can reasonably be expected that this upward movement will continue until 2002, when virtually all educational organisations and a proportion of families close to the maximum will consume the educational multimedia products and services available on the market. Of course, the speed at which this movement will take place, and the size of the final market will vary from one region of Europe to another, with the economically wealthiest regions, and those with a deep-rooted technological culture being better equipped, and at a faster pace than the others. But this variability will mainly apply to the domestic market ; the institutional market, given that all governments of European Union countries and their institutions are mobilised on the subject, is likely to expand in a more regular and uniform manner.
There are simple, well-known quantitative parameters which enable this extensive movement to be measured :
These figures enable the basic market progression to be measured, but they are of course not sufficient to allow a more precise analysis of usage and potential demand, particularly for the institutional market. The connection rate of schools to the Internet, for example, is not a significant parameter in itself ; to estimate the position of the Internet and multimedia tools in daily educational practices, detailed information must be available concerning the accessibility of the network from all the terminals of the school, and on the type and volume of pedagogical usage. Unfortunately, we do not dispose of reliable and compatible data for all European countries. This lack of statistical evidence can be explained by many factors : the difficulty in defining the elements to be measured, and especially the difficulty in collecting information, particularly due to the fact that the educational systems are very often organised on a regional basis and that the national authorities are not usually able to force the local authorities to produce data in a compatible format, or even to provide the data that already exists. Another difficulty stems from today's very fast expansion rate, meaning that the data would have to be updated at a fast pace, a practically impossible task.
The educational multimedia professionals must therefore resign themselves to developing their strategies without the support of reliable and diversified quantitative data. But in my opinion, this is not particularly serious, in that the fundamental trends are strong and their outcome virtually certain :
Furthermore, surveys have shown that the prospects are better in the educational field due to two concomitant factors :
This general forecast can be confirmed in many ways : by on-the-spot enquiries conducted regularly by specialist institutes, or just as well by local observations that anyone can make in one's local environment : in a high school class in Paris, for example, the percentage of pupils with an Internet connection at home rose from 30% in September 1998 to 70% one year later. The " leader " effect plays a decisive role for the youngsters and their families : once multimedia equipment and the Internet are perceived as offering an advantage in terms of chances of success at school, particularly due to the fact that these technologies are being adopted by the educational institutions, there is an incentive for the families to acquire the equipment themselves.
For the professionals on the educational multimedia market, or planning to enter it, this news is generally considered as promising a rosy future. But in fact, it is perhaps not as good as it would appear for all market operators. For companies providing technological products and services, manufacturers of computer equipment, producers and publishers of generic software (operating systems, networks, office automation software, etc.), basic telecommunication service providers, the educational market is without doubt attractive and profitable. But in my opinion, the companies producing content and services with a high educational added value are in a less enviable situation.
In this paper, I intend to explain my rather unusual point of view, and try to identify the characteristics of the market which I consider should be taken into account by the producers of educational multimedia content and services in defining industrial strategies adapted to the true situation of the market.
Why the market is a risky one
I have already gone into the question of the risks presented by the progression of the market for producers of educational contents and services, particularly publishers, in an INA publication, an extract from my book. Here, I shall simply give a summary of this analysis. It is based essentially on observing and analysing the progression of multimedia tools in teaching, and on the observation that production and communication activities, based on technical tools without any particular educational vocation or content (word processing, spread sheets, Web browser, mail manager, HTLM page and interactive multimedia module editor) play an increasingly important role in educational multimedia applications. Furthermore, the Internet facilitates and encourages the use of generalist information resources, the access to which is free (such as the NASA for information on astronomy), which could be a handicap difficult to overcome for producers who are, and will be present on the Web with services that need to be paid for. And finally, the Web is increasingly used by the teaching profession to pool the educational resources it creates, making such resources available to colleagues free of charge, through the network.
If such a trend were to continue, it could represent a threat for publishers and distributors of educational products and services, at least on the institutional market. A threat in the short term, since the private operators would have difficulty in penetrating a market inundated with free products and services, but a threat also in the long term, since the market for traditional products, particularly school reference books, could also suffer. Finally, in my view, although the domestic market is not directly involved in this transformation, it could be subjected to the indirect effects in the medium or long term, due to the fact that the applications used in the classroom will, at least partially, serve as models for the applications used at home.
I am not drawing a totally pessimistic conclusion from this analysis, but I do believe that, if they want to succeed, the private producers should first make the effort to gain insight of the market, not just on the surface, and purely from a quantitative angle, but more in depth, to take account of the contents and the ways in which they are used. And even once they have this knowledge, that is not enough ; the professionals should also use their imagination, be creative and intuitive, but that's nothing new......
I would like to participate in this work of reflection, to my modest limits, firstly by trying to contribute to improving our knowledge of the markets, and then by suggesting some possible means of access for content professionals.
An overall view of the market
The market can be analysed in quite a classical manner by describing its players, the products and services traded and the rules which govern this exchange. The demand comes from families, primary, secondary and higher education institutions ; the supply from a large variety of industrial players, traditional publishers, multimedia publishers, producers of hardware and software, telecommunications operators, but also from the users themselves, either on an individual basis or grouped together in representative organisations : professional associations, public or semi-public production and distribution bodies. The goods exchanged on the market can either be off-line products (CD-ROM, DVD), or on-line services for disseminating customised information and services (Websites, on-line teaching supports, distribution lists, etc.).
But the essential point is not just to identify the various elements of the market, and make an estimate of its size. It is more important to understand the rules by which the flows of exchange are today governed. The market dynamics are complex and difficult to forecast, but should nevertheless not be ignored as being totally haphazard ; and one can at least attempt to explain some of the issues that govern its structure. I would like to suggest three issues which, in my view, should absolutely be considered as priorities by the professionals :
Book culture - multimedia culture
Amongst the professionals present on the market, publishers of school reference books (Hachette in France, Klett in Germany, Longman in the UK, Mondadori in Italy, Gyldendal in Denmark, Anaya in Spain, etc.) are inclined to apply a strategy of continuity from the printed products to multimedia products and services. Their assets are : brand awareness, knowledge of the market, strong distribution networks and high production potential. But these assets are not sufficient to compensate for the weaknesses related to the poor familiarity of these publishers with what we can call " cyberculture ". It can be seen in practice that it is not sufficient to set up a special department within a company to generate strategic and cultural reorientation required by the leaders. Some major groups such as Hachette and Havas in France, Bertelsmann in Germany, Pearson in the UK, have tried to develop synergies between subsidiaries, but these efforts have rarely met with success : each unit is tempted to protect its own wealth in order to preserve its independence, which makes co-operation difficult. The only examples to the contrary, of successfully transferring paper culture to multimedia culture are to be found in companies such as Britannica or Encyclopaedia Universalis which have been forced to accept radical change due to the total collapse of their market. The publishers working on the school book market are not yet confronted with such decisions ; but for how long ?....
In competition with the traditional publishers, there are now new publishers who have the advantage of being born into the digital culture from the start, for example, video game publishers who have expanded their market to the educational and family markets : Disney and Broderbund in the USA, Coktel Vision and Ubi Soft in France, Ocean in England, etc. There are also publishers exclusively operating on the educational, family and institutional market : TLC or Edmark in the USA, Edusoft or Jeriko in France, Heureka in Germany, Didael in Italy, AVP in the United Kingdom, Orfeus in Denmark, etc. And that's not all. There are also generic software producers who work occasionally on the educational market, Microsoft, for example, who has managed to assert itself on the highly profitable market of general multimedia encyclopaedias with Encarta. But other players too from the audio-visual sector, such as television channels, BBC in the UK, RAI in Italy, La Cinquième in France, and all the European telecommunications operators, take initiatives in the production sector for educational applications, both off-line and especially on-line in the aim of supporting and extending their basic offer for the institutional and domestic markets. These last players will be ruthless competitors in that they are now expecting direct economic profit from an activity which will remain a secondary activity for them. To complete the picture, we should also mention the presence on the young children's market of toy manufacturers such as Lego, Ravensburger or the American company Mattel. This fight against competitors better adapted to the fast technological developments has lead several publishers, after a few attempts, to abandon the market altogether (Flammarion in France, Harper-Collins in the UK, Mondadori in Italy), whereas those who remain are strictly limiting their investments and trying to develop alliances with other companies.
In the USA the market for educational multimedia products and services has always been dominated by the multimedia companies, whereas in Europe, the professionals have tried, with great difficulty, to converge the two cultures : the book and multimedia. Will they succeed ? This is obviously a difficult question to answer. Up until now, this strategy seems to have done more harm than good, but the future is still open. It will be interesting to observe the developments in the years to come for gigantic structures such as Vivendi or Bertelsmann which include units from all the sectors concerned united together within a single industrial structure : telecommunications, traditional publishing, IT, audio-visual tools. The strategy of industrial mergers which seems to be generally adopted by these groups has a certain number of advantages. And yet it is just as reasonable to adopt a very pragmatic " American-style " strategy, confining everyone within their speciality, without trying to impose associations that are too difficult to manage, or unnatural. On this subject, a good example could be the British computer company Research Machine, which sells hardware and ILS systems (Integrated Leaning Systems) similar to those that opened up the American market to companies such as TLC or Cendant.
Public players - private players
Primary and secondary education in Europe, as everywhere else in the world, belongs in a great majority of cases to the public sector.
The educational institution does not try, or at least no longer tries to produce its own tables, chairs, computers or word-processing software. But the closer one gets to the heart of the learning process, for example, with pedagogical products including contents, the greater the likelihood of challenging outside intervention. This process, of course, varies greatly from one country to another : it is much stronger in France, where the tradition of public service and a certain mistrust of the private sector are still strong, than in the United Kingdom where private sector participation is systematically requested by the public authorities, both on paper and in practice. However, the onset of the Internet and the Web has revealed throughout Europe, but also in the United States, that members of the teaching profession are increasingly involved in non-commercial activities and exchange. We can therefore see the emergence of websites, developed with the backing of the institution at many levels, compiling large collections of educational resources, theme-based documents, course scripts, link directories, sometimes as far as actual handbooks themselves. By acting in this manner, the teachers are doing no more than complying with a cultural characteristic of the Web as a whole, but they do so with remarkable enthusiasm. Of course, not all the teaching profession is involved in such voluntary production ; but a small percentage of them would be sufficient to satisfy the needs of the greatest number.
If they want to succeed, the professionals of the content business must accept and comply with this situation, which is not in their favour. It is to be expected that in Europe, as opposed to what can be observed in the United States or Canada, the mainstream educational system will have difficulty in accepting that free Web services should be financed by advertising. The arrangement by which industrial and financial partnerships be formed between public and private players, such as in the United Kingdom, for example with the National Grid for Learning, would appear today to be the most advanced and most promising solution to solve this problem. In countries where there does not appear to be such political will, alternative solutions will have to be found, closer to the field.
The individual approach - the institutional approach.
The European market for educational multimedia products and services is a highly segmented market : segmented into countries, levels, disciplines, supports. Amongst all these barriers, the language and cultural barrier is the most important. The European market is often described as a " niche " market, difficult to exploit from a commercial point of view. Although this diagnosis is true from a global standpoint, it should nevertheless be tempered, as there are some market sub-sectors which are able to overcome national boundaries and achieve a satisfactory size in doing so. A good example is the case of family CD-ROM for early age learning (3 to 7 years old), or the general encyclopaedia. But on these potentially profitable niches, competition is fierce and the European producers have to face up to powerful north American players such as Disney, TLC or Microsoft. However, some European publishers who specialise in these niche markets are able to make names for themselves.
Are there other market sub-sectors which can be seen as something more than narrow, restricted niches ? The professionals of the business should use their imagination to identify them and get onto them, but it is hardly probable that there will be many possibilities. Market segmentation is likely to remain a strong feature of the European market and the professionals will, one way or another, have to make do with the situation. I would like to invite them to broaden their outlook on this subject and look towards the future, towards the possible types of transformation in the educational system as a whole.
The development of a more individual approach is one of the strong cultural features of our times. In education, this trend has important consequences and information and communication technologies play an important role. This is particularly visible in the United States, where there is a clear trend for deregulation : an increase in the offer for remote higher education, progress in " home-schooling ", the appearance of " voucher-programs " and " charter-schools ". Such strongly branded movements to " deinstitutionalise " are not likely to reach Europe in the short term, if only because our educational systems do not suffer from the same weaknesses as the north-American system. Nevertheless, we should not believe that Europe will be completely protected from the tensions caused by the rise in individualism in educational institutions.
In my view, it is essential that the professionals of educational multimedia should be aware of these phenomena, that they feel involved and that they should actively participate in the discussions which will undoubtedly take place on the subject. This third issue concerning the structure of the market is certainly the most complex and the most difficult to explain. But it is also likely to be the greatest source of innovation and should therefore attract the attention of operators who like to think of themselves as being in the front line for technological and educational inventiveness.
And where do we go from here ?
The above analysis of the situation does not encourage one to make a firm forecast concerning the future developments in the market ; however, it is possible to make some recommendations for the professionals of multimedia content to help them to take into consideration what we have pinpointed as being the main issues likely to structure the market in the future.
It is unavoidable that there will be changes in applications made by students and teachers, working together in educational institutions, or separately in their homes, in " back-office ", and in their respective activities. But for private producers eager to gain a return on their investments, the market is a risky one and will stay so. Scenarios of failure, caused for example by the development of practices of " self-sufficiency " in public institutions, are easier to imagine than scenarios of success. To such an extent that the first recommendation that I feel obliged to make for professionals is the following : you can be quite sure that the going will not be easy ; do not commit the sin of excess pride or excess confidence ; yes, the market will grow, but it could grow just as well without you as with you...
To a certain extent, the current situation should remind publishers of the foundations of their profession : identifying creators and providing as large an audience as possible for their work. For traditional publishers, this return to the roots is at the same time a high risk move towards another culture, the multimedia culture, or even more so, the Web. As for the specialist publishers, they will only be able to benefit from the advantageous position that they currently occupy if they are able to establish a balance by increasing their knowledge and understanding of educational issues. For both sides, publishing strategies founded purely on market research, where the only involvement of the players is to shape projects designed to comply with what the managers believe to be demand, are reaching their limits. To breathe new life into their inspiration, the professionals must mingle with the " inhabitants " of the electronic education networks : for that is where their future authors are to be found.
We often hear that the only profitable and promising sector on the educational multimedia market is the domestic sector. This is partly true. But does that mean that the producers should count only on this one component of the market ? This is logically the strategy of professionals such as Disney or video game publishers, for whom educational multimedia is just one element of a global offer of electronic and audio-visual leisure activities for the family. But this strategy is not necessarily recommended for the producers who specialise in education.
For families, extracurricular products are always seen as complementary to the free public service ; in a majority of cases, for economic reasons, or for questions of principle, the amount of money spent by families on complementary educational products and services will remain limited. Furthermore, the offer of paying services for families will also be subjected to competition from free services which will be presented as the natural continuation of the services offered by the school. The solution of financing from advertising is often suggested. But it is only applicable today to the generalist portals ; for educational sites which will always remain relatively specialist sites, it will take several years before a sufficiently large flow of users can be guaranteed for the advertisers. And yet, during these years, the market will have taken shape, and probably not in a way we can imagine today.
That is why, in my view, it would be a risky strategy for the professionals of educational resources to concentrate only on the family market, if they can avoid it. An alternative solution, based on a continuity in the offer with the public education system, seems preferable to me, in the mean and long term. To put it into application, the content professionals should try to build partnerships with representative public organisations, on all levels.
The future of the market, for these professionals, will at least
partly depend on the construction and success of such partnerships.