"Crossovers"

from General Informatics, LLC

International Consultants in Economic Development, Research & Policy, and Higher Education

These “crossovers” often signify important trends – in the cats/dogs case, that more households were becoming apartment-dwellers, with all that means for appliance sales and so on. When a trend captures 50% of its domain, it's a sign that it is here to stay. For this reason, crossovers tell us important things about our future - and usually show us that the future is already here.

Here is a haphazard collection of crossovers, past, present, and forecasted. Peruse them. Imagine – and, if you will, exploit – the trends they imply.

Historic collection 2014 additions 2015 additions 2016 additions

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In 1984,	for the 1st time,	MRCA Information Service's consumer purchase tracking service first published the fact that, for the first time, more U.S. households owned cats than dogs. This was a sign of greater urbanism and trends toward apartment and condominium living. It was a sign to marketers that the future lay more in miniature and under-the-cabinet kitchen appliances, and less in tractor mowers.
In 1991,	for the 1st time,	U.S. investment in the tools of the information trade - computers and communications gear - outpaced capital spending in the industrial sector. By 1992, only one year after the two trend lines had crossed for the first time, capital investment in information technology was nearly $25 billion higher than traditional industrial capital investment, and pulling ahead quickly. (David Kline, ”Market Forces” HotWired 12/11/95)
In 1990,	for the 1st time,	Americans first made more visits to “alternative health providers” than to conventional M.D.s. The next half-decade saw explosive growth in herbs, vitamins, and natural food stores.
In 1995,	for the 1st time,	more PCs were sold than television sets. This implied at the time that the “set-top box” for home delivery of interactive multimedia would be a dead-end technology. However, the post-2004 growth of HDTV sets uncrossed this crossover.
Around 2000,	for the 1st time,	more salsa was sold in the U.S. than ketchup.
In the 2001 holiday period,	for the 1st time,	more women than men shopped online. Women made up 58% of the 29 million online shoppers in the Thanksgiving-Christmas weeks of the year, according to the Pew Trust, making the mix of online shoppers nearly identical to the mix of bricks&mortar shoppers. As most early adopters of anything - including online shopping - are young males, this crossover indicated a new maturity of the World Wide Web.
In 2003,	for the 1st time,	more digital cameras were sold than film cameras. This was about five years sooner than forecasters expected. Thus Kodak was described in the press as "the troubled imaging company."
In May, 2003,	for the 1st time,	the NPD Group reported that more laptop computers were sold in stores than desktop computers. (Obviously this excludes online and b2b sales.) NPD also told us that in the same month, for the first time, Liquid Crystal Display monitors accounted for a majority of monitor sales in stores, displacing cathode-ray tubes.
In 2004,	for the 1st time,	the number of U.S. households with broadband access equals those using dialup Internet access.
In 2004,	for the 1st time,	the opening weekend gross of a new video game exceeded the expected opening weekend gross of a new major movie.
In 2004,	for the 1st time,	Amazon.com’s home electronic sales volume exceeded its book sales (December).
In 2004,	for the 1st time,	sales of servers based on Intel and AMD chips exceeded sales of UNIX servers (Business Week, 2/14/05, p.81).
In 2006,	for the 1st time,	video game sales exceed music sales (PricewaterhouseCoopers prediction).
In 2006,	for the 1st time,	Exports of Japanese pop culture items - video games, comic books, etc. - exceeded Japanese automobile exports, according to National Public Radio. So much for American dominance of worldwide pop culture. Watch out Hollywood!
In 2007,	for the 1st time,	Chat, discussion, and social networking web sites enjoyed more hits than pornography sites, according to The Economist.
In 2007,	for the 1st time,	Toyota sold more cars than General Motors. This makes Toyota the world's top auto maker by unit sales, a spot GM had held since 1931.
In 2007,	for the 1st time,	According to Bill Gates, speaking at COMDEX, "Young people" are spending more hours in front of their PCs than in front of their television sets.
In 2007,	for the 1st time,	According to Wired, the majority of human beings live in cities.
In 2007	for the 1st time,	According to Pew Research, the values and purchasing behavior of middle- and upper middle-class African-Americans was more similar to those of white Americans than to those of low-income Blacks.
In 2008,	for the 1st time,	the U.S. overtook France as the world's leading wine-drinking nation. Growth in U.S. consumption is driven by Australian wines. (Business Week prediction, Feb. 28, 2005, p.14)
In 2009,	for the 1st time,	more people worldwide used the Internet for social networking than for email. Of course, the primary use of Internet continued to be "search."
In 2014,	for the 1st time,	the amount of money invested in defined-contribution pension plans will exceed the amount invested in defined-benefit schemes. (The number of people enrolled in defined-contribution schemes surpassed the number in traditional defined-benefit plans in 1988.) The Economist, June 12, 2008, http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11529345.
In 2035,	for the 1st time,	the number of Muslims in Great Britain will exceed the number of Christians, according to a British religious think-tank. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-564722/More-practising-Muslims-Christians-Britain-2035.html

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2014 additions:

2002 Mobile phone subscriptions outstrip land lines (The Economist)

2004 California's spending on prisons passed spending on universities. The Economist 9/10/11, p.36.

2005 Computer models execute more than half of all stock trades. Business Week 4/18/05, p88.

2006 Debit cards grew steadily, hitting 50 percent in 2006. Today, there are more debit cards than credit cards in circulation. Austin American-Statesman,October 02, 2011.

2007 Japan's exports to China overtake those to US (The Economist)

2008 Brookings Institution: "For decades, the entrance of firms outpaced their exit, meaning a net increase in new businesses. The authors see that... as a proxy to an inclination toward entrepreneurism. But since at least 1978, the lines have converged, albeit slowly. In 2008, they reached a watershed moment and crossed."

2009 VCs invested more in healthcare startups than in IT startups. Wall Street Journal.

2009 "Drugs exceed motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death." Austin American-Statesman, 9/18/11

2010 China files more patent applications than Japan (Economist)

2010 The news that student debt has surpassed credit card debt as the largest source of consumer debt in the United States is a function of rising costs of attending higher education, cuts to state and federal financial aid, and the growth of for-profit private industry around the student loan bubble.

2010 China overtook the US in manufactured output, energy use, and car sales. ( The Economist 4/21/12, p.41)

2011: In US, more births of non-Caucasian babies than Caucasian babies. ( The Economist May 19th, 2012, p.8)

2011 Cell phones outnumber humans in the US, according to the wireless trade group CTIA.

2012 sales of digital music will finally surpass sales of all physical music (CDs, vinyl, etc.), according to the research firm Strategy Analytics. "In the US, eBooks sales are now topping hardcovers for the first time" (TechCrunch). The global market for eBooks is driven by India, Australia, the UK and the United States, in that order (Bowker Global eBook Research). The laggards, according to Bowker, are Japan and France. (Thanks to Frédéric Filloux for this info, which he posted on Off The eBook Shelf, June 18, 2012.)

2012 "Readers are voting with their wallets: The eBook is winning. In the US, eBook sales are now topping hardcovers for the first time (story in TechCrunch ). Not everywhere of course. According to the Bowker Global eBook Research, the global market for eBooks is driven — in that order — by India, Australia, the UK and the United States. The laggards are Japan and (no surprise) France." Off The eBook Shelf, June 18, 2012 - 10:04 am | Edited by Frédéric Filloux

2012 Financial Times’ Digital Subscribers Surpass Its Print Readers- The Financial Times’ digital subscribers surpassed its print customers for the first time, marking a milestone that the New York Times and other newspapers with so-called paywalls are aiming to reach. businessweek.com

2012 It happened for the first time: Bot traffic eclipsed human Internet traffic, according to the bot-trackers at Incapsula.

2012 Bikes officially outsell cars in European Union. An analysis by National Public Radio indicates that in 2012, more bikes than cars were sold in each of the 27 members of the European Union except Belgium and Luxembourg.

2013 "The average American will spend more time with digital media each day (about 5 hours) than watching television." (eMarketer)

2013 More People Have Cellphones Than Toilets. UN reports there are now more people with mobile phones (six billion for world population of seven billion) on earth than there are with access to clean toilets (4.5 billion). (Matthew Yglesias posted Friday, March 22,, at 2:21 PM)

2013 Sales of smartphones will exceed those of non-smart ones. (IHS Research)

2013 marked a turning point for solar photovoltaics, according to Clean Edge's Clean Energy Trends 2014 report, as newly installed solar PV generating capacity exceeded that of wind power for the first time. The solar PV market grew to $91.3 billion from $79.7 billion in 2012, with a record 36.5 GW installed globally.
2013 Adult Diapers to Outsell Babies' Diapers in Japan. (The Lowdown. Posted: 13 Jul 2013 09:02 AM PDT)

2013 Bloomberg: China spent more on smart grids than the U.S. for the first time in 2013, with the $4.3 billion it invested accounting for almost a third of the world’s total.

2013 for the first time, China's share of global CO₂ emissions surpasses European Union's. Science reported this announcement from the Global Carbon Project.

2014 For the first time, the craft beer industry shipped more barrels of beer than Budweiser last year. Matt Schiavenza reports in The Atlantic November 28, 2014

2014 Credit card spending by non-Koreans visiting Korea outstrips card spending by Koreans on overseas trips. Korea Herald, Nov 29-30, 2014.

January 2014 Mobile usage has overtaken desktop usage. In addition, Flurry, which tracks app usage, reports that apps account for the vast majority of time spent vs. the mobile web.

April, 2014 According to a Nielsen study, half of Americans over 55 years of age now own a smartphone. This is a 10 percent increase from just earlier in the year, making this the first time the majority of all age groups have owned a smartphone.

By the end of 2014, we will have more mobile traffic than PC traffic. Marissa Mayer, Chief Executive Officer, Yahoo, USA; Davos Co-Chair in The New Digital Context.

2014 Texas overtakes California as #1 technology-exporting state, according to a tech industry lobbying firm.

At the end of June 2014, the number of people subscribing to broadband internet from the nine largest US cable companies (49,915,000) exceeded the number of television subscribers (49,910,000) for the first time. That’s according to a new tally by Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group.

2014 "Stephen Marche wants the U.S. to wake up to a serious public health issue: “Two years ago, suicide became the leading cause of death by injury in America, surpassing car accidents for the first time. And the major reason for that change was a cohort shift: Men and women between the ages of 35 and 64 are increasingly committing suicide. The latest addition to these statistics is Robin Williams. Since nothing ever happens in America until it happens to a celebrity, perhaps this will be the moment when we notice that we're living in the middle of a suicide crisis." .micCheck
2014 BookBaby reports: Over 50% of all email gets opened on a phone. Read more.
2014 The U.S. becomes world’s biggest oil producer after overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia as extraction of energy from shale rock spurs the nation’s economic recovery, Bank of America Corp. said.
2014 More Women Than Men Own Licenses For First Time in Automotive History. The Low-Down.
May 2, 2014 A near crossover: The Wall Street Journal reported a record: Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) now say they want the United States to be less active in world affairs. A decade ago, only 14 percent felt this way.

June 27, 2014 Solar met more than 50 percent of Germany’s total electricity demand for the first time this week. Triple Pundit.
2016 By 2016, over half the world's Internet traffic is expected to come from Wi-Fi connections.

2016 China to become the world’s largest economy. Thanks to four decades of strong economic growth, China is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy in 2016. Researchers forecast rapid growth in China in the coming years, which will gradually slow as the country becomes more industrialized. Others (Economist.com/chinavusa) say it will take until 2018 for China's GDP to overtake that of the US.

2017 "Internet of Things." The number of things connected to Internet will equal the number of connected people. (Korea Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning).

Before 2020, chicken will overtake pork as the most-consumed meat on the planet. ( The Economist 9/14/2013)

By 2043, more than half of USA residents will be "nonwhite," Austin American Statesman, April 6, 2014.

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2015 additions:

2011, "For the first time in recorded history, the Latin America and Caribbean region was home to more people in the middle class than in poverty." Site Selection International, December 2014.

2012, More British soldiers and veterans took their own lives than were killed in battle. The 50 suicides exceeds the 40 soldiers who died fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan during the same period. http://www.independent.co.uk/

2013, According to ComScore and Morgan Stanley Research, the number of mobile internet users surpassed desktop internet users.

2014, For the first time, the U.S. stopped more non-Mexicans than Mexicans at the border. [PolicyMic]

2014, The amount paid out to iOS app developers in 2014 — over $10 billion — now exceeds Hollywood at the box office. Business Insider.

2014, U.S. law enforcement officials took more property from people than burglars did. (MicCheck Daily)

2014 the percentage of women with a bachelor’s degree in the US (32%) surpassed the percentage of men (31.9%) with one, according to data from the US Census Bureau.

2014, Cha-Cha-Chat: Number of WhatsApp Messages Now Exceeds Standard Texts The Economist.

2015, America’s middle class shrunk to less than 50 per cent of the population for the first time since the early 1970s. See this nice gif from Financial Times:

FT gif

2015, The college students who smoke weed now outnumber those who smoke cigarettes. MicCheck Daily

2015, Teenagers interact with friends over social networks just about as much as they see each other in person, the Pew survey shows. http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/my-best-friend-is-named-dogpound99

2015, Corporations Now Spend More Lobbying Congress Than Taxpayers Do Funding It

2015, Uber has overtaken taxis as a preferred mode of transportation among road warriors in Q2, according to Certify's analysis of second-quarter expense reports. Nancy Trejos reports in USA Today:

around 2015, “the UK is already one of the very few countries in the world where non-academic staff already outnumber academics …. directors of corporate affairs and human relations and the heads of research excellence framework strategy, overseas recruitment, research impact, fundraising, external relations and brand management." https://www.timeshighereducation.com/content/laurie-taylor-on-academics-v-administrators

2015, Foreign Born College Grads Working in the US Now Earn More Than US College Grads, Jordan Yadoo reports in Bloomberg.

2015, We now spend half of our waking lives consuming media. Quartz

2015, the number of cable television subscribers is eclipsed by the number of Internet subscribers.

2015, adjuncts or lecturers or other species of contingent labor, who now account for more than half of all post-secondary teaching positions in the country. http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/pay-for-decent-teachers-not-dr-phil

2015, McGraw-Hill unveils mobile-first Connect platform, new research [SXSWedu 2015] With a new paper showing a majority of studying taking place via mobile device, the increasingly digital publisher is meeting college students where they are.

2015, Employment in intangible industries has exceeded employment in tangible industries (Ken Jarboe reports in The Intangible Economy blog). "Tangible activities are primarily physical; intangible are primarily mental. Cutting hair, ringing up a sale at a cash register, making a car, harvesting a crop - all of these are primarily a physical activity. The transaction involves the movement of atoms. Designing a poster, negotiating a deal, writing an article for the Washington Post - these are primarily mental involving the manipulation of Intangible information bits."

2015, More than half of U.S. POS terminals to be EMV chip-enabled by year-end (Aite Group)

2015, There Are Now as Many Solar Jobs as Coal Jobs in the US. Vox Jan. 18.

2015, Millennials overtook Boomers as the biggest share of the US workforce.

2015, For the first time in human history, media rights for sporting events are about to surpass gate receipts - eg, the box office - in financial value. The LowDown Report

2017, Digital Ad Spending To Surpass TV

2019, Juniper research has forecast that Wi-Fi networks will carry almost 60% of smartphone and tablet data traffic, reaching over 115,000PB (Petabytes).

2016 additions:

Uber and Lyft Have Overtaken Rental Cars Among Business Travelers (Bloomberg, 4/2016)

There are now more poor people in America than in China.(MicCheck/Credit Suisse Wealth Report).

Americans Now Have Nearly As Many Smartphones As TVs (Recode.net), and Bloomberg adds that as of 2014, we spend more time staring at phones than at TVs.

According to Senator Elizabeth Warren, support for Donald Trump from KKK members exceeded that from Republican Party officials in early May, 2016.

Open access articles will overtake subscription articles from 2018 (World Economic Forum)

“This [2016] is the first year in history where investments in renewable energy have outpaced those in fossil fuels. So the market is moving ahead much, much faster than most people understand,” John Morton, the White House’s senior director for energy and climate change, said (Washington Post).

2016 China overtakes USA in supercomputing power (Science)

Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the first quarter of this year. (CNN Money, May 20, 2016)

2015: Natural gas overtook coal as the top U.S. power source. (The Lowdown)

2016: Japan Now Has More Electric Charging Sites Than Gas Stations (World Economic Forum)

2016: "There are more obese people than underweight people in the world. According to a new study published in The Lancet, Earth’s obese population has increased sixfold since 1975, and if current trends continue, one in five adults worldwide will be obese by 2025."

"Americans are buying more pot than Girl Scout Cookies. In 2015, medical and recreational marijuana posted between $3 billion and $3.4 billionin revenue, while the more wholesome confections collected $776 million in cookie sales."

Global spending on mobile ads will surpass desktop spending for the first time [in 2017], according to Zenith, the research arm of ad giant Publicis Groupe.

"By 2050, plastic will be more plentiful in our oceans than fish. As humans continue to increase the production of plastic while remaining terrible at recycling it, the material threatens to outweigh marine life pound-for-pound."

In 2014, more Harvard Business School Grads went into technology than into banking for the first time since the dot-com era. (Quartz)

2016: Audiobooks are starting to outsell print books. (Berrett-Koehler publishers)

2016: Guns and cars now kill Americans at the same rate. Motor vehicle-related deaths have dropped by about 25% in the past decade, while gun deaths have mostly remained flat. (MicCheck)

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