The economic contribution of Ordnance Survey - Competitors

The GI market in Great Britain was estimated to have a value of over £200m in 1997³³. This estimate does not incorporate the value of OS products and services to those activities that are required, by statute, to be based on OS information. OS seems to be responsible for about 40-45% of this market. There is therefore a large amount of value produced by competitors to OS. However, even though sales worth over £100m do not originate directly from OS, a significant proportion can still be judged as OS-dependent because many of the products and services produced by its competitors are based on OS data. In particular, some OS licensees would most likely not exist in the absence of OS.

However, it has not been possible to obtain details of the proportion of competitors' revenues that is based on products and services which use OS data, and no attempt has been made in this report to quantify this impact of OS on the economy. This is likely to be a significant omission from the analysis, and the economic value of OS is assumed to be larger than estimated because of the value of competitor products based on OS data.

33 1997 Market Data determined from NOP Market Research.