I ran across a recent post by Roger Hart at GeoCarta that highlighted a remote sensing market report (BCC Research) suggesting the total world-wide market for remote sensing products was on order of $7 billion in 2006. This number is similar to the $3.6 billion for 2006 estimated by Daratech, if you remove weather forecasting and climate change studies from their 2006 estimate.

These are big numbers. However, the total remote sensing and geospatial market are also segmented, with lots of niches that make it difficult for developing economies of scale in the collection of data, or the creation of derivative products.

I have a sense that this is changing. In other words, that the growing demand for products will run right into the ability of individuals to create content using base maps provided by large scale mapping projects (e.g. NAIP). I believe that we may be approaching a cusp period in the development of geospatial markets, where the benefits of low cost powerful servers and commodity computing (a la Amazon Web Services EC2/S3), combined with the robust open source geospatial software (e.g. GDAL) and the innovative power of individuals and small businesses, will begin to impact the traditional government services model. I see the impact to be greater supplies of content at lower cost points, resulting in an ever increasing demand for geospatial products.

I am not quite sure who wins or loses in this period. I would like to think that a rising tide raises all boats. I do think that it will be a period of rapid change, so if you are doing the same old thing, with the same old tools, it might be time to reassess your business model.