Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Competition and Regulation Threaten Sharing Economy Markets

Eighty-three percent of U.S. broadband households, or more than 250 million consumers, own and use a smartphone. A recent beneficiary to this mass adoption has been the sharing economy phenomenon, which includes sharing apps such as Uber, Lyft and Airbnb. These business models are augmented by real-time data including location, instant gratification, on-demand pricing, and easy payment options.

Their ease and convenience -- built on the intelligence of social, location, and mobility data through a smartphone-plus-app ecosystem -- have created perfect conditions for sharing economy apps to thrive.

In most cases, sharing economy apps connect buyers and sellers, providers and recipients, or owners and users through a well-designed, low-friction app experience that benefits both sides. When such experiences are delivered at scale, they can be massively disruptive or complementary to existing industries and business models.

Currently, 40 percent of monthly sharing economy app users in the U.S. strongly agree that they rarely use traditional services due to their sharing economy app use.

From the article "Competition and Regulation Threaten Sharing Economy Markets" by Parks Associates.

Previously In The News

Hulu Valued At $5.8 Billion After Time Warner Investment

The new Hulu service is an attempt by its traditional entertainment company owners to secure their footing in television’s digital future, where streaming has become the norm and competition from deep...

AT&T-Time Warner Deal Could Spur More Mergers, Scrutiny

Beyond that, AT&T also gets revenue by licensing those movies and TV series to other pay-TV providers and subscription Net TV services such as Netflix. "Video and entertainment will remain the key dri...

AT&T-Time Warner Deal: A Good Merger In The New Media Era Or A Bad Remake?

Pay-TV operators are seeing a "slow erosion of the core business," analyst Brett Sappington at Parks Associates said. "After years of attempts to be more than just a 'dumb pipe,' pay-TV operators h...

PayPal Leads The Way In US Mobile Payments, But Retailers Not Happy

Mobile payments are still an up-and-coming new capability for consumers; while mobile banking has clearly led the way, there’s still a lot of interest in mobile payments at least in some fields. Wh...