In a recent study, International Resource Development Inc. (IRD) of Norwalk, CT concluded that the market for business videotex will not exceed $500 million a year in the next decade--despite the fact that its technology represents a breakthrough in information retrieval and transaction processing. The study argues that videotex is simply too unsophisticated for most business applications. Many professionals already have access to other forms of information retrieval that are more flexible and powerful. In the second half of the 60s, most companies wanting to establish an on-site retrieval system will be looking for much more than they can get from straight videotex. The trend may be towards integrated data processing/ videotex/management computing systems. Several terminals that can display both videotex and computing formats are already being marketed.
IRD identifies three sections in the videotex market: public service, private systems, and closed user groups. of the three, the last will probably prove to be the most durable, with private system sales never amounting to much and public service all but ceasing to exist by the end of the 1980s.
IRD posits that public systems will disappear as closed user groups evolve. With the projected widespread availability of gateways which enable videotex users to communicate with third party computers various regional and industrial closed users groups will interconnect to form de facto national services. IRD considers that a preplanned national public service such as the British Prestel System, now being widely tested in the U.S., is doomed to failure because it must try to be all things to all people while the nature of videotex demands information tailored to the needs of specific target groups.
