Name: Obikaonu, Pauline C.
Reg.No. MIM/EDUC/6668/2009-2010
Course: Online Information Industries
Assignment: The New Information Industry
The paper examines the on-going technological transformation of the information industry and provides an overview of the industry as it stands today with a look into its future developments, the sociological factors connected to its evolution and the essential building blocks in associated institutions within it.
At one time, the industry was in its early stage of transformation, organized on the basis of information form with industries focusing on a single form and as voice, text, image audio/video or data. However extra-ordinary advances have occurred in the past two decades and are continuing at a breakneck pace in digital electronics with changes from narrow band transmission to broad band communications
The information mega- industry deals with information in the following forms: text, images voice, data, audio/video and information emanating from those forms include photography, publishing, telecommunication, computing and entertainment respectively
Digital electronics has become the dominant technology and the alignment will occur along the lines of information function or capability.
Under the functionally based companies the dominant players worldwide are very likely to be from the entertainment, consumer electronics, personal computer and communications industries.
Looking at the form-based information industry in which information industries had been defined the underlying technologies for handling each type of information have been vastly different in the past and each technology could not handle other forms of information and secondly the Government has actively constrained many information – based companies from entering other types of information businesses.
Information- oriented businesses will in future be reorganized into the following broad groups ;( 1) Players involved in the creation and collection of diverse types of information content. (2) Players involved in the manufacture of a wide variety of information appliances and (3) Players organized to engage in various modes of information transport.
Due to the fact that information-based businesses are becoming increasingly crucial to our commercial and social lives, inefficiencies in the information marketplace are becoming less tolerable.
As long as standing divisions between the major components of the information industry – computers consumer electronics, publishing, imaging telecommunications and entertainment programming – have begun to blur and fade, players within the industry have engaged in a near frenzy of deal making.
There are breakthroughs in computing (Digitization) and communication technology, Information technology is moving towards electronics and digitization. The structural transformation of information industry has become inevitable, industry structure is driven by core competencies which is a mastery of the enabling technologies that help them create, produce and distribute their products and services.
The crucial success factors include the following: Global orientation, managing geopolitical dynamics, flexibility, speed and productivity, Alliances and partnering, quality obsession, mass customization, breakthrough innovation, access to capital and investment in human capital.
While all companies must keep in focus on the end users to enable them build product development and the issue of price ratios; the vision of a convergent information industry is necessary and will take place in due course because the technological and business imperatives called for it.
Worthy of note is the fact that, nations like the United States of America, now spend trillions of dollars annually on information- based goods and services which impacts on every other sector of the economy making the U.S. the most competitive economic power in the world considering its superior integration and exploitation of information technology.
Comments
This paper is outdated as it has been overtaken by rapid development in technology. This fact is buttressed by the fact that even the internet was not in vogue at the time this paper was written.
Again I observed that it was from all this transactions that the idea of the internet vis-à-vis its discovery came about. The information industry is very dynamic, unstable in terms of development that what is new today becomes very obsolete in a very short while. This means that information companies must be at alert, with continuous innovations and be ready for stiff competition with each other in terms of creativity and upgrading of facilities and products. In summary, the information sector is the bedrock on which other sectors stand and operate.