The data have been obtained by visual interpretation of Landsat TM geocoded images followed by digitalization.

With the digitalization of mobile communications, broadcasters and telecommunications operators are invading the data transmission market, creating an industry for data alone that will be worth US 10 billion by the year 2000.

Digitalization brought about fundamental changes in the sector, such as short product life cycle (up to three to five years or even shorter), further globalization of the market, vast product differentiation, and the lowering of barriers to entry due to globalization and partnerships among major players.

Statisticians struggle, for example, to account for how consumers are benefiting from the increased quality and speed of delivery that often results from digitalization. Furthermore, in the digital age, many services are being provided free of charge, which means they are not being counted as consumption at all.

Central to these companies success has been their understanding of a fundamental trend affecting nearly all industries individual empowerment through the Internet, app technology, digitalization, and social media. Most traditional companies, meanwhile, remain focused on their macro environment, at the expense of responding adequately to the new micro level forces in play.

The decline in productivity growth in the EU is surprising, given the rapid onset of digitalization often described as the industrial revolution of the twenty first century. In fact, part of the perceived slowdown can be attributed to measurement issues In Europe, as well as the United States, the technological changes being wrought by smartphones and the Internet simply are not showing up in the productivity data.