Every week, we bring you the top stories and analyses from the global Subscription Economy.
This Is What Peak Car Looks Like
Excerpts from an article by Keith Naughton and David Welch in Bloomberg Businessweek
The automobile—once both a badge of success and the most convenient conveyance between points A and B—is falling out of favor in cities around the world as ride-hailing and other new transportation options proliferate and concerns over gridlock and pollution spark a reevaluation of privately owned wheels. Auto sales in the U.S., after four record or near-record years, are declining this year, and analysts say they may never again reach those heights. Worldwide, residents are migrating to megacities—expected to be home to two-thirds of the global population by midcentury—where an automobile can be an expensive inconvenience. Young people continue to turn away from cars, with only 26 percent of U.S. 16-year-olds earning a driver’s license in 2017, a rite of passage that almost half that cohort would have obtained just 36 years ago, according to Sivak Applied Research. Likewise, the annual number of 17-year-olds taking driving tests in the U.K. has fallen 28 percent in the past decade.
Meanwhile, mobility services are multiplying rapidly, with everything from electric scooters to robo-taxis trying to establish a foothold in the market. Increasingly, major urban centers such as London, Madrid, and Mexico City are restricting cars’ access. Such constraints, plus the expansion of the sharing economy and the advent of the autonomous age, have made automakers nervous. That’s also pushed global policymakers to consider the possibility that the world is approaching “peak car”—a tipping point when the killer transportation app of the 20th century finally begins a steady decline, transforming the way we move.
Rather than signaling the end of the road for the automobile, peak car is a reflection that reurbanization and the widespread adoption of mobile apps that can summon a vehicle on demand will lessen the need for many of the 1.3 billion vehicles now on the road. And with new cars increasingly expensive, but mostly used just a few hours a day, the financial case for alternatives is growing stronger. “When you put all these trends together, you’re going to see a cap on personal vehicle ownership start to emerge,” says Mike Ramsey, an automotive consultant with researcher Gartner Inc. “We are near peak car.”
Read the full article on Bloomberg Businessweek
Subscriptions: The Next Frontier In Environmental Sustainability
Excerpts from an article by Jeffrey Wissink in Forbes
Subscriptions are booming across both B2B and B2C applications. Companies across all industries are scrambling to reimagine their traditional, transaction-based customer relationships into recurring revenue relationships. It’s easy to see why.
Most importantly, customers love subscriptions. As I’ve written before, the reasons behind the explosive growth of subscriptions are rooted in the basic concepts of customer access and efficiency. Through subscriptions, both businesses and consumers are entering a phase where access to near-limitless resources is the new reality, and can be paid for as needed. Of course, companies that sell subscriptions to their customers love the predictability of revenue too. Predictable revenue means that capital spending can be more reliably planned, which pleases both internal and external stakeholders.
So while the advance of subscription business models is likely a result of a perfect storm of consumer, business and capital market alignment, I believe we need to add a fourth underlying reason that subscriptions could be inevitable in many industries: Subscriptions can be good for the planet.
Read the full article on Forbes
Xerox Mobilizes Print Services for People On the Go
Excerpts from an article on WhatTheyThink?
Venues, businesses and campuses frequented by mobile technology users can now generate a new revenue stream with the Xerox Instant Print Kiosk. The kiosk offers fast and easy access to popular cloud services and common printing, copying, scanning and faxing applications, making it the ideal self-serve solution for those on the go.
Launching the Instant Print Kiosk is one of many efforts underway at Xerox to redefine – and add value – to the user experience. In this case, the kiosk is unlike traditional coin-operated printing and copying devices. Its high-speed cloud connectivity and wide-range of capabilities mean more jobs are completed in record time, resulting in recurring revenue for kiosk owners.
Prime locations for the kiosk include high-traffic areas, such as retail settings, hotels, airports, convention centers and libraries, as well as higher education institutions for student and faculty use.
Read the full article on WhatTheyThink?
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