The global information technology report 2010-2011

World Economic Forum just released "The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011" which has a lot of interesting information.

By habit I normally first look at Sweden and Spain.

In this case Sweden comes out very well, while Spain... well... does not come out as well.

"Sweden tops the 2010–11 rankings for the second time in a row, with an outstanding performance across the board."

It both bothers me and reinforces me in my opinions of certain things in Spain.

Just some examples:

	Sweden	Spain
Procedures to start a business	3	10
Days to start a business	15	47
Efficiency in settling business disputes (rank)	2	73
Quality of the educational system (rank)	8	106
Company spending on R&D (rank)	1	47
Broadband Internet subscribers (% of pop)	32%	22%
Internet users (% of pop)	90%	62%
Impact of ICT on access to basic services (rank)	1	60
Capacity for innovation (rank)	3	42
Patent applications (per million pop)	236	78

It is also interesting to see that one of the authors to the document actually is César Alierta (President of Telefónica).

Antibiotics

One of the things that I never have gotten used to in Spain is the excessive, in relation to my references, use of antibiotics.

It has gotten better. Initially, when I came here, the auto-medication with antibiotics even for flues were custom. But still this is a source of discussion, even within the family.
Before coming to Spain I remember taking antibiotics on very specific occasions, while here people almost gets offended if they are not given some antibiotics by the doctor. That probably means that the doctor doesn't take the patients pain seriously. (I will spare you the story of when my Spanish wife had a Conjunctivitis in Sweden and was asked to put some teabags on the eyes.)


Anyway, see below a chart from the "Center for Global Development".

Sweden is in the same group as Germany. In Spain the usage of antibiotics per person is twice as high as in Sweden.
As a result, the cases of resistant bacterias is >10 times higher than in Sweden!!!

This, if anything, should make the Spanish rules to change. However, I am inclined to thing that nothing will change :-(

For the complete study, see link (pdf).

Apple

Actually, I do not like Apples "closed wall"-business model but I cannot avoid to be impressed by what they have achieved.

Just before launching iPhone I read somewhere about their objective, measured as a percentage of sold devices in the world. Or maybe it was as a percentage of the invoicing for sold devices, I don't really remember. What I DO remember though, was my reaction: "No way!!!"

I couldn't even imagine that a new player, with no experience of "the art of making cellular phones" would be able to make a decent device. It was not only me thinking so. Nokia thought the same... as did the majority, if not all, of the existing cell-phone manufacturers.

Well, we know the result. Apple re-designed the cell-phone market.

Impressing!!

This graph from "The economist" confirms the success of Apple. In three years they have gone from nothing to hauling in +50% of all the profit that cell-phone devices generates. This they are doing with one sole model and by having less than 5% of the total cell-phone market (counted by sold devices).

However you look on these graphs... you can't deny that Apple has done something impressive.