Analyst Profile Detailed
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Scott Moore
Consultant, IDC CEMA
Team:
Infrastructure
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Scott Moore has more than nine years of experience in covering the information technology and telecommunications markets of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. He has managed projects in the areas of telecommunications regulation, strategic and business planning, and IT and telecommunications market assessment and analysis. Mr. Moore has authored numerous studies on the ICT markets across Europe, covering areas like broadband, Internet, and IT security technology and services. Moore currently focuses on managing and contributing to consulting projects and special studies covering Central and Eastern Europe. He has recently contributed to projects on IT in the public administration and utilities sectors, the impact of EU funding on ICT market development, national policies on eGovernment services and on innovation among ICT SMEs.
Moore began his working life at IDC within the European Telecoms group and then transferred to the Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa (CEMA) region to become program manager for the CEMA Communications group. <br><br>
Moore holds a masters in optical electronics from the University of Strathclyde and has worked as a visiting scientist, focusing on optical polarization, at the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg. He also holds a joint degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Southampton.
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Frequently Asked Questions
| Why is Central and Eastern Europe trailing Western Europe in terms of Web penetration, and when will it catch up? |
The underlying reason for the lower rates of Web penetration in CEE countries are the lower levels of wealth. The costs of access devices (predominantly PCs) and Internet access services in the region are roughly equivalent to those in Western Europe. However, consumers have much lower disposable incomes, small businesses have less money and the education sector suffers from a severe lack of funding. This inevitably has a major effect on the availability of Web access to the populations of CEE countries. Despite higher GDP growth rates in CEE than in Western Europe, considerably lower levels of wealth will remain a reality for many years to come. On the other hand, the case of Estonia shows that government action can help to reverse the effects of the wealth gap. Unfortunately, the majority of governments in CEE have done less than their EU neighbours to liberalize telecoms markets, promote investment in Internet infrastructure, and encourage both public and private sector initiatives to increase Web usage. This will result in a widening Web penetration gap between the region and Western Europe.
| | With levels of mobile phone penetration in leading CEE countries such as the Czech Republic and Estonia now so high, surely the mobile Internet will enable CEE to catch up? |
First of all, I should point out that levels of mobile phone penetration in most West European countries remain higher than in the Czech Republic and Estonia. Whatismore, although WAP-enabled handsets are now being shipped in large quantities in CEE, use of WAP services remains marginal (and considerably lower than in Western Europe). More importantly though, for the forseeable future the majority of mobile Internet users across Europe will be existing Web users. Thus, into the medium term, the availability of mobile Internet access will not contribute signicantly to increasing overall levels of Internet penetration. Nor is it likely to have a major effect on the value of ecommerce.
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