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Southwest Airlines, the world’s fifth-biggest airline by market value, is a major U.S. low-cost carrier headquartered in Dallas, Texas and serves more than 120 destinations across the U.S., Mexico, and Central America. Despite being headquartered in Dallas, Southwest Airlines’ largest hubs lie outside of its home state. Southwest Airlines’ largest hubs  are Denver International Airport and Las Vegas, with approximately 12.3 and 10.6 million Southwest passengers handled at the respective airports. Merger aftermath and a shifting market position. After the merger of Orlando-based AirTran Airways in late 2014 under the Southwest Airlines brand, the company’s operating income almost doubled, from 2.2 billion U.S. dollars to 4.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2015. The merger also provided growth in the domestic passenger market. In 2015, Southwest Airlines became the leading carrier in terms of market share and surpassed its main competitors, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines. The airline's position has shifted since then, and it ranked as the third-largest airline in the domestic market in the United States in 2025, narrowly ahead of United Airlines. Impact of COVID-19 on the airline's performance. The coronavirus pandemic heavily impacted the airline's performance; between 2019 and 2020, the airline’s passenger numbers dropped by close to 60 percent and the company registered a net loss of over three million dollars. Southwest Airlines finances began to recover in 2021, when the airline recorded a net income of 977 million U.S. dollars. Continued impacts of the COVID-pandemic, winter storms in late 2022, and pilot and staff shortages led to further travel disruptions and impacted Southwest’s profitability. In 2024, the airline recorded a net income of 465 million U.S. dollars, and this figure declined further to 441 million U.S. dollars in 2025, remaining smaller than the 2021 and 2022 results. Customer satisfaction. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), Southwest's customer satisfaction score stood at 77 points in 2026, with 100 being the highest and best possible customer satisfaction score. Historically, the airline consistently topped this ranking until 2012, but has vied with competitors such as JetBlue since. In recent years, the airline has performed above the airline average of 76 points, but it no longer tops the ranking: in 2026, Delta Air Lines led with 79 points, followed by JetBlue with 78 points. This shift suggests that rival carriers have closed, and in some cases overtaken, the service gap that once set Southwest apart, even as the airline's low-cost model continues to shape its broader competitive standing.

Founded in 1999 as an online B2B wholesaler, Alibaba Group has been China's irrefutable e-commerce king over the past two decades. The company's tech empire stretches across B2B, B2C, and C2C e-commerce, cloud computing, local service, logistics, and financial services. In 2024, Alibaba's online retail properties accounted for around one-fifth of global e-commerce sales by gross merchandise volume, well ahead of Amazon's share. However, challenged by China's ever-strengthening anti-monopoly law and competition from the rising social commerce companies, Alibaba has shown signs of losing its throne. As of mid-2025, Alibaba's market value stood at around 285 billion U.S. dollars, well below the roughly 850 billion dollars it commanded at its 2020 peak. The road to success. The late 90s witnessed disruptions in China's internet industry. The success of Yahoo inspired many young ambitious Chinese entrepreneurs to start their own online businesses. In the midst of the entrepreneurial boom, an English teacher realized there was great potential in e-commerce and founded a B2B marketplace site named Alibaba. The teacher, Ma Yun (also known as Jack Ma), later became a legend and pioneer of China's internet development. Alibaba's success truly began when it expanded its online retail business. The company launched its C2C retail platform Taobao in 2003 and its B2C retail platform Tmall in 2008. These platforms rapidly filled in the gaps in China's online retail market, and though the company's net income grew sharply in the years after, it has swung up and down more recently amid tougher competition. In November 2009, Alibaba initiated its first Singles' Day online shopping event. Since then, the event has recurred annually and has become the world's largest sales event. Besides the e-commerce platforms, Alibaba also owned a third-party online payment platform Alipay, an instant messaging tool Aliwangwang, and a digital marketing platform Alimama.com. A conglomerate began to take shape. In 2014, the company went public in New York with a record IPO that raised around 25 billion U.S. dollars, more extensive than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. As of early 2026, it remains the second-largest IPO worldwide, behind only Saudi Aramco. The threats to Alibaba's e-commerce empire. In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, Alibaba Group's annual revenue surpassed one trillion yuan, growing roughly tenfold compared to a decade earlier. In the past decade, Alibaba's organizational structure has undergone several rounds of changes. Domestically, the company expanded its business into cloud computing, logistics services, O2O customer services, and entertainment. In 2014, Alibaba Group split its financial service Alipay and rebranded it as Ant Group. Today, domestic e-commerce makes up around half of the company's revenue, a notable decline from its former dominance. Nevertheless, other segments have witnessed robust growth. Despite its revenue growth, Alibaba has faced unprecedented competition in recent years. Pinduoduo, Douyin, and Kuaishou have gained immense popularity in recent years due to the rise of social commerce and short-video commerce. In 2024, Alibaba's share of China's e-commerce market stood at around 36 percent, with Pinduoduo having overtaken JD.com to become the country's second-largest platform. Globally, Alibaba is also confronted by rising wariness toward Chinese technology companies among some overseas audiences. Domestically, China's erratic policies and political uncertainties further hurt investors' confidence in Alibaba. In November 2020, Beijing halted Ant Group's 34.5 billion U.S. dollars' IPO, which was expected to be the world's largest at the time. In the following months, China's market regulators began investigating Alibaba and several other big techs for violating China's anti-monopoly law. As a result of the investigation, Alibaba Group received a record 2.8 billion U.S. dollars fine. Still, the company continues to push abroad: Alibaba's international e-commerce retail revenue reached over 108 billion yuan in fiscal 2025, underlining that overseas growth remains a key pillar of its strategy even as its domestic dominance erodes.

The semiconductor industry has entered a new era defined by AI, powered by the relentless demand from data centers, as well as the rapid advancements in memory technology. In 2025, the global semiconductor market reached nearly 796 billion U.S. dollars, a 26 percent jump from the previous year, and these AI drivers are set to launch semiconductor companies further into the global spotlight. However, with geopolitical tensions, export restrictions, and trade tariffs casting shadows on the chip industry's future, innovative breakthroughs will need to be achieved amidst global power struggles. AI reshaping the chip industry. The most recognizable name across the semiconductor and wider tech landscape over recent times has unquestionably been Nvidia. The firm, once famed for its gaming graphics cards, has pioneered the AI market. The company's business has been transformed by the demand from data centers leading the AI revolution, with its data center segment revenue far outpacing rivals Intel and AMD in recent quarters. However, AI chip restrictions have tightened globally, notably with the United States limiting exports to China in an attempt to curtail technological advancements. Nonetheless, as the biggest end market for semiconductors in 2025, data center and storage requirements that help to enable AI will continue to shape the chip ecosystem. Memory as an AI enabler to boost the industry. Beyond Nvidia, some of the biggest companies within the semiconductor industry include integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. These firms are specialists in memory technologies, a market that reached over 230 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, surging well past earlier projections and once again aided by the AI boom. AI applications require more device memory and storage due to their demand for real-time data processing and handling of vast datasets. As such, the demand for high-bandwidth memory technology is also set to have a major impact on the semiconductor industry's near future. Growing capacity to meet surging demand. As well as IDMs, other notable firms within the global semiconductor industry include fabless companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom, and AMD, the likes of which work closely with foundries. The most prominent of the semiconductor foundries is TSMC, which held over 70 percent of foundry revenue share in early 2026, controlling the majority of the chip manufacturing market. With supply chain resilience a key concern for the industry, the diversification of manufacturing channels will remain an important debate. This includes strategies like that of Intel and its IDM 2.0 model, where it will look to attract a growing number of external customers to utilize its foundry services. Signposts for the future. While AI and memory in data centers may appear to capture much of the attention across the semiconductor industry, it cannot be forgotten that this industry continues to face many challenges that may hamper its future growth. Forecasts suggest overall semiconductor market revenue will keep climbing toward nearly 976 billion U.S. dollars in 2026, but whether that be technology, tariffs, or talent, the semiconductor industry is sure to continue to make the headlines, both economically and politically.

Statista's Pulse Survey tracks monthly how adults in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany feel about society, their personal future, and the challenges in their lives, with around 1,050 respondents per country and month. Ahead of World Mental Health Day, this insight looks at eight months of that data, from January to August 2026, for what it says about emotional strain and mental well-being. About half feel strained. Respondents were asked to pick the one feeling that best describes how they currently feel about society. Counting anxious, overwhelmed, exhausted, and disconnected together, 49% of adults in the U.S., 50% in Germany, and 56% in the UK named one of these feelings in August. The mix differs by country. In the UK, anxiety dominates: across the eight months, a quarter of adults named it on average, compared with 16% in the U.S. Germany's most distinctive feeling is exhaustion, chosen by 21% on average, almost twice as often as in the U.S. or the UK. In the U.S., strain is spread across three feelings: anxiety, exhaustion, and feeling overwhelmed were each named by 13% to 15% of adults in August. The spring of 2026. Germany's emotional climate changed abruptly. Between February and March, anxiety jumped from 7% to 26% and hopefulness halved, and most of that persisted through August. Worry that the threat of nuclear war is closer than ever, already shared by around half of adults in January, peaked in all three markets in April (up to 60% in the UK) before easing to 46–48% by August. The UK also felt the spring in its outlook: optimism about the personal future fell from 59% to 50%, before recovering. Mental health: steady, but unevenly carried. Through all of these shifts, one indicator stayed remarkably steady. On average, around a quarter of adults named mental health as one of their biggest personal challenges. In the U.S. and Germany, it barely moved from month to month. Only the UK saw a temporary rise, from 20% in January to 26% in April. Cost of living was named by even more adults, between 49% and 62%. Within each country, the burden is unevenly distributed. Across the eight months, women were more likely than men to feel strained in every market, by 11 to 14 percentage points. Income shows the widest gaps: between 32% and 34% of low-income adults named mental health as a personal challenge, compared with 14% to 18% of high-income adults. Age adds a twist. Adults aged 18 to 29 named mental health as a challenge more often than those aged 50 and over in all three markets, yet in the UK the 50-plus group is the most anxious about society: 38% chose anxiety, against 15% of 18 to 29-year-olds. Summary. Two things stand out. First, strain is widespread: about half of adults in all three markets named a strain-related feeling, and close to half worried that the threat of nuclear war was closer than ever. Second, moods and mental health can move separately. In Germany, feelings about society swung sharply in the spring, yet around one in four adults kept naming mental health as a personal challenge, month after month, as they did in the U.S. For around a quarter of adults, mental health is a constant concern, whatever the mood of the month, and the strain falls hardest on women and on those with lower incomes.

E-commerce has been one of the most profitable markets to come from technological advancement, yet it has not reached the same heights in Germany as in other advanced European economies: German e-commerce penetration stood at 74.55 percent in 2025, well behind Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands, each above 85 percent. Still, with penetration already covering most of the population, the market is experiencing steady, robust growth. German shoppers research heavily before buying. Few German consumers buy on impulse. Checking the internet first was the behavior cited most often in data on attitudes toward online shopping, and customer reviews carry strong influence over the final decision. The pattern extends across categories: many consumers browse online for inspiration before buying home appliances, toys, games, or luxury fashion items, even when they end up purchasing in a store. Research has become the default starting point for a purchase, not an optional step reserved for big-ticket items. Why and what e-buyers shop online. Shopping motivations vary by generation, but a few traits cut across age groups. Special offers remain highly persuasive, and most shoppers are still willing to pay more when quality is assured, a pattern that holds broadly across generations. Fashion is the category most associated with digital-first purchasing in Germany: online shopping category preferences place it ahead of home appliances and toys and games. Amazon anchors a concentrated competitive field. A handful of platforms capture most of Germany's online spending. Amazon's domestic storefront generated by far the highest net sales among the country's top online stores in 2025, ahead of eBay and Otto in second and third place. The same gap shows up in gross merchandise value, where leading online marketplaces place Amazon far above eBay and Otto in transaction volume. Within fashion specifically, Amazon also leads the top fashion e-commerce retailers, followed by Zalando, Shein, and Temu, showing how international players have gained ground in a once domestic-led category. Germany's online retail market combines steady revenue growth with a shopper base that is research-driven, price-sensitive, and concentrated around a handful of dominant platforms. Spending per shopper is set to climb too. Average e-commerce spending per buyer is projected to rise from 1,850 U.S. dollars in 2025 toward 2,020 U.S. dollars by 2030, a sign that the marketplace leaders already capturing the bulk of consumer spending are well placed to absorb most of that growth.

The United States is the single largest national pharmaceutical market in the world, accounting for over half of global prescription drug sales by value. Net medicine spending exceeded 600 billion U.S. dollars in 2025 and is forecast to surpass 800 billion dollars by the end of the decade. Revenue is concentrated in specialty and chronic-care therapy areas — led by oncology, followed by immunology and anti-diabetes — with the GLP-1 class emerging as a major commercial force: Mounjaro and Ozempic now rank among the top five drugs by U.S. revenue. This scale is sustained by heavy R&D reinvestment and a pipeline that keeps delivering robust novel drug approvals and elevated orphan designations across rare diseases and specialty medicine. High spending, shifting payer dynamics. Per capita drug expenditure in the U.S. runs far above the comparable high-income country average, financed through a mix of private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and out-of-pocket payments — with Medicare's share more than tripling over the period shown. Generics and biosimilars now deliver hundreds of billions in annual savings, yet branded products continue to capture a growing share of total spending, while Medicare-negotiated price reductions on major drugs, some topping 70 percent, are beginning to reshape the pricing landscape. Growth is decelerating but divergent. Market revenue growth is forecast to ease gradually through the end of the decade, but company-level trajectories diverge sharply. Eli Lilly — propelled by its GLP-1 franchise — leads with a forecast five-year growth rate above 14 percent, far ahead of peers such as Amgen and Merck. Major patent expirations — Keytruda, Eliquis, and Stelara together represent over 70 billion U.S. dollars in peak annual sales — will determine which companies successfully reload their portfolios. Strategic outlook. The U.S. will remain the world's most consequential pharmaceutical profit pool, but value creation is being reshaped by three converging pressures. First, a patent cliff: between 2025 and 2028, blockbusters targeting complex biologics face loss of exclusivity. Unlike the small-molecule cliffs of the early 2010s, biosimilar erosion will unfold more slowly but with deeper structural consequences for originator margins. Second, policy-driven price compression on two fronts. The IRA's Medicare negotiation provisions are estimated to save around 320 billion U.S. dollars through 2031, while the administration's Most-Favored-Nation executive order is pushing manufacturers to align U.S. prices with the lowest offered to comparable nations — with major companies already signing binding agreements and the TrumpRx platform extending price concessions directly to patients. Third, steep new tariffs on imported branded drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients could raise input costs just as margins are already under pressure. Taken together, these forces compress the industry from both the revenue and cost sides simultaneously — a configuration the sector has not faced before. Companies with differentiated pipelines, scaled metabolic franchises, and domestic manufacturing optionality are best positioned to navigate this triple squeeze. Those still dependent on mature blockbusters approaching patent expiry face the most acute strategic risk.

Japan's medical device market is large and set to keep expanding. Revenue in the segment is modeled at about 30 billion U.S. dollars and is projected to keep rising through 2031. Sales remain centered on equipment-intensive categories, with therapeutic and diagnostic devices clearly ahead of all other product types, and hospitals acting as the largest wholesale customers. The installed base reflects this: Japan has almost 120 CT scanners per million people, close to three times the level in the United States. This concentration has a structural logic, since such equipment is capital-intensive and bought mainly by institutions. It also suggests that growth is increasingly driven by a limited number of hardware segments. With an already dense equipment base, it may depend more on replacement and upgrade cycles tied to hospital investment decisions. Strong overseas sales, heavy import reliance. Japanese manufacturers look abroad, while the home market looks to imports. In the latest reporting year, overseas sales of Japanese manufacturers and sellers reached around 2.6 trillion Japanese yen (~17bn USD), well above domestic sales of nationally produced devices at 1.7 trillion yen (~11bn USD). Therapeutic equipment is the clearest example, with overseas sales exceeding domestic sales by a wide margin. Imports, meanwhile, are worth around 3.6 trillion yen (~24bn USD) annually, with the United States as the dominant origin. This points to a two-tier structure. Outbound trade is concentrated in selected strengths such as endoscopes, while hospitals at home source a broad range of products from foreign suppliers. This may increase sensitivity to developments in a single supplier country. Incremental approvals and an emerging digital layer. Approvals lean incremental, and a digital layer is emerging. In the latest reporting year, 680 of the roughly 990 approved devices were generic, while only 21 were new devices. This reflects a pipeline weighted toward incremental products rather than breakthrough technologies. At the same time, digital health users are modeled at more than 28 million and are projected to more than double by 2031. This indicates a growing software and service layer beside hardware, though the data does not show whether it will change the import-reliant structure. Strategic outlook. Demographics are likely to remain the most reliable demand driver. Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world, and the share of elderly citizens is still projected to rise. This sustains demand for cardiovascular, orthopedic, diagnostic and home-care technologies. Whether domestic supply can keep pace is less certain. Advanced devices continue to be sourced largely from abroad, and approvals of innovative products have historically lagged behind the United States. Regulatory reforms are intended to narrow that gap. They include priority review for innovative devices and a two-stage approval system for software-based devices, although some measures remain at the planning stage. Government support for caregiving robotics and digital technologies adds momentum toward domestic innovation. Pricing introduces another variable. Efforts to contain healthcare costs, including rules that reference average foreign prices, can reduce reimbursement for innovative products, and the effect on launch decisions remains hard to predict. Telemedicine and in-home care may shift part of demand away from hospitals, though the pace is still open.

There are few brand names in the world that invoke luxury as strongly as Louis Vuitton. Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, more commonly referred to as LVMH Group, is a French luxury goods conglomerate primarily known for its fashion house, known as simply Louis Vuitton, named after its founder. The group operates globally, selling luxury leather goods, handbags, ready-to-wear fashion, and other fashion accessories. Since 1989, the company has been run by Frenchman Bernard Arnault, following the merger of the luxury goods producer with champagne producer Moët & Chandon and cognac manufacturer Hennessy. The world's most valuable brand. Louis Vuitton is currently the second most valuable luxury brand in the world, running ahead of the other heavy weights of the luxury goods industry, such as Chanel and Gucci. In 2025, LVMH Group’s fashion and leather goods segment brought in almost 38 billion euros in global sales, an impressive figure that signals the stable recovery of the global personal luxury goods industry from the impact of the pandemic. Fashion and leather goods was the most resilient business segment for LVMH, since the group's other lines including watches and jewelry and wine and spirit segments reported flat sales. LVMH Group continues to open more stores worldwide, with around 88 new stores opening between 2019 and 2020 despite the pandemic. In 2025, the company operated 6,283 store locations worldwide. Employee numbers continued to increase for the company as well. In fact, over the past decade, the number of employees dropped for the first time during the 2025 reporting period, and the employee count has plunged to 211,000.  Competitors. Kering, Richemont, and LVMH are considered the greatest three names of the luxury goods industry. Like LVMH, the most recent financial year indicated good earnings for the Kering Group and Richemont in terms of increased sales performance as pandemic-related travel restrictions were eased and more people were able to travel abroad. The Kering Group owns some of the most influential luxury fashion brands like Gucci, while Richemont is the parent company to a number of luxury jewelry and watchmaker maisons including Cartier and IWC Schaffhausen.

The global non-alcoholic beverages market has grown into one of the most valuable sectors in consumer goods. Total market revenue surpassed 1.6 trillion U.S. dollars in 2025 and is forecast to continue its upward trajectory through 2029. As revenue by country confirms, the United States led by a wide margin, ahead of China and Japan, reflecting the market's concentration in high-income economies. Bottled water and soft drinks form the core. Bottled water occupies a significant position in the non-alcoholic drinks market. The United States and China ranked as the leading bottled water markets by revenue, with the United States alone generating over 116 billion U.S. dollars. Soft drinks revenue followed a similar geographic pattern, with the United States generating over 225 billion U.S. dollars, well ahead of Nigeria and the United Kingdom in second and third place, respectively. Energy drinks drive the most dynamic growth. The energy and sports drinks sub-category has been one of the market's fastest-moving segments. Segment revenue climbed from around 146 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 to over 214 billion U.S. dollars in 2024 and is projected to approach nearly 249 billion U.S. dollars by 2029. By contrast, global packed beverage consumption in 2025 still showed water as the dominant category by volume, surpassing 535 billion liters and far outpacing carbonated soft drinks and juices. Health trends and sober-curious lifestyles reshape demand. Shifting consumer attitudes toward alcohol have opened significant new opportunities for the non-alcoholic beverages market. A growing share of consumers, particularly younger generations, moved toward alcohol reduction or full abstinence in recent years, driven primarily by health and economic motivations. Non-alcoholic beer, wine, and spirits all posted strong sales gains as a result, with major industry players significantly expanding their non-alcoholic product portfolios. The juices segment has also benefited from health-conscious consumption trends, representing a notable component of the overall market. Leading brands maintain global dominance. At the company level, the market remained concentrated around a handful of global giants. Leading beverage companies  were headed by Nestlé, followed by Coca-Cola. In terms of non-alcoholic brand value, Coca-Cola ranked first globally in 2025, ahead of Pepsi and the fast-growing Chinese water brand Nongfu Spring, underscoring the enduring strength of heritage brands even as new challengers gain ground.

Escalating tariffs are rewriting the rules for global payments. The average tariff rate on imports to the United States reached 6.6 percent in 2026, more than double the 2.39 percent recorded just two years earlier. That increase raises costs across global supply chains that payment networks ultimately help settle. Trade flows are shifting in response. The goods trade deficit with China narrowed to 201.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, down from 295.3 billion U.S. dollars the year before, as tariff barriers redirected the trade flows that cross-border payment volumes depend on. Payment volumes keep climbing despite trade friction. Tariff-driven uncertainty has not slowed global transaction activity. Cashless transactions processed in Asia-Pacific totaled 1.1 trillion in 2026, roughly double the volume recorded in Europe that same year. Money is still moving across borders at scale, and the price tag on that movement keeps rising along with it. The cross-border payments market size stood at 194.6 trillion U.S. dollars in 2024 and is projected to climb to 320 trillion U.S. dollars by 2032. While tariffs can slow goods, they have not slowed the payments built to settle them. Dollar-backed stablecoins face a tariff-era test. What happens to dollar dominance when tariff disputes put the currency itself under scrutiny? Stablecoin markets are already answering that question. The dollar-backed stablecoin market value of Tether reached 169.4 billion U.S. dollars as of September 12, 2025, making it the largest fiat-backed digital asset tied to the currency. Stablecoins settle transactions outside traditional correspondent banking channels. That gives payment providers a route around friction building up in conventional trade finance, and it explains why Tether’s growth matters well beyond crypto trading desks. Rate policy and tariffs are rewriting consumer credit. Tariff-driven inflation has fed directly into monetary policy, and monetary policy has fed directly into how consumers pay. U.S. interest rate and inflation readings stood at 4 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively, in September 2026, keeping U.S. borrowing costs well above the 1.25 percent policy rate held in Japan. Consumers facing tariff-inflated prices are turning to installment options to manage larger purchases. Buy now pay later spending in global e-commerce is forecast to reach 332.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2026. Higher borrowing costs and higher prices are pushing the same consumer toward the same workaround. A fractured trade environment tests fintech resilience. Payment and fintech providers that once treated cross-border friction as a secondary concern no longer have that option. Tariff volatility shows no sign of abating, and it now has to sit inside core strategy rather than the risk appendix. Fintech investment worldwide totaled 122.8 billion U.S. dollars across 5,328 deals in 2025, still well below the 239.7 billion U.S. dollar peak reached in 2021. Capital has not returned to pre-2021 levels, and at this pace it will not until trade policy stops moving. Investors are not waiting for clarity that may not come; they are pricing in permanent volatility, and firms still planning around a return to pre-tariff conditions are planning for a market that no longer exists.

China is one of the leading retail markets in the world. In 2025, the country's retail sales revenue surpassed 50 trillion yuan, continuing its steady upward climb. That year, rural and urban households continued to witness steady growth in disposable incomes, although the income gap between the two groups remains significant. However, consumer confidence in China remained well below the record levels seen in 2017. Online retail capturing market share. E-commerce has become a defining force in China's retail landscape, with its share of total retail sales settling at around a quarter of the market in recent years. In particular, live commerce has kept climbing, with its  market size nearly tripling since 2021 to reach almost 7 trillion yuan in 2025. Douyin, the most popular livestreaming platform in China, generated close to 4.4 trillion yuan from its live commerce business that year, a sign of how firmly shoppable video has settled into everyday browsing habits. Heated competition on the physical field. Physical retailers in China are encountering stiff competition. On the one hand, e-commerce has been taking over the retail market; on the other, a price battle is underway in the offline market, squeezing the profit margins of most players. In general, convenience stores and membership supermarkets managed to stay profitable thanks to their high foot traffic and membership fees, respectively, with convenience store sales growing faster than overall retail in 2025. However, most of the traditional supermarkets recorded a huge net loss in 2023, and dozens of them closed within the first quarter of 2024. To survive the competition, many supermarket brands have launched their private labels to gain better control of product quality, differentiate product offerings from their rivals, build customer loyalty, and, most importantly, increase profit margins. A way to cross the border between online and offline. China's mature logistics network has enabled the development of a new retail mode, the so-called online-to-offline (O2O) retail businesses. On-demand O2O retail remains a small but fast-growing slice of online shopping, with O2O retail GMV expanding by roughly 50 percent in 2025. One of its fastest-growing subsets, quick commerce (also known as "q-commerce"), grew into a market worth nearly 1 trillion yuan in 2025, which provides instant/on-demand delivery of online orders within 30 to 45 minutes. In addition, more and more e-retailers and physical retailers have integrated VR and AR techniques to enhance the immersive shopping experiences of consumers. Together, these shifts show that speed, convenience, and immersive experience, not just price, will increasingly decide who wins China's retail competition.

Poor mental health in the UK is not evenly spread. Over 30 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds reported poor mental health, compared with 17 percent of those aged 65 and over. The gap by financial status is even wider: some 54 percent of adults who were struggling financially were affected, while fewer than one in five of those who were comfortable reported the same. This indicates that age and money worries tend to add up. It suggests that distress is highest among people who still have the longest working lives ahead and the smallest financial cushion. Pressure carries into working life. This pattern helps explain why the effects reach the labour market. The share of employed adults with poor mental health reached nearly 22 percent in 2023/24, up from 15 percent in 2009/10. Stress is the most frequently cited concern among health and safety representatives, ahead of workload and bullying. Counselling and phased returns to work are among the most common employer measures, while training managers to support staff is less widespread. This points to support that reacts to problems more often than it prepares managers to prevent them. The effect on the wider economy shows in long-term sickness:  2.77 million people were economically inactive for this reason in Q2 2026, well above pre-pandemic levels, although slightly below the late-2023 peak. Treatment scales up, severe outcomes persist. Medication is the main form of treatment: 86 percent of NHS mental health patients in England reported receiving it in 2025. This ties rising demand closely to prescription volumes, as seen with ADHD, where  302 thousand people received medication in 2023/24, almost three times the 2015/16 level. At the most severe end, 6,190 suicides were recorded in England and Wales in 2024, with rates for both men and women at their highest on record and the male rate more than three times the female one. This suggests that severe outcomes have not eased alongside widespread medication use. Outlook: strain likely to continue. These patterns point to mental health becoming less of a stand-alone healthcare issue and more of a wider problem that cuts across education, work and welfare. Recent official reviews conclude that the rise in demand is real and not just a result of greater awareness, which weakens the assumption that pressure will ease once awareness settles. Youth inactivity shows the consequence: roughly one in eight young people is outside education, employment and training, and a growing share cite health conditions. Costs once carried by clinical services are therefore moving into work and welfare systems. At the same time, services are expanding, but from a base of long backlogs, with long waiting lists and mental health's share of the NHS budget expected to ease. Reform such as the Mental Health Act 2025 will take roughly a decade to implement fully. The most plausible reading is continued strain, with treatment capacity, employer practice and welfare design changing at different speeds, although how quickly pressure eases remains uncertain.

The number of U.S. adults receiving mental health treatment or counseling more than doubled between 2002 and 2025, reaching  over 57 million. This trajectory reflects genuine growth in both diagnosed need and available care options, most notably the mainstreaming of telehealth and prescription-based treatment. Yet scale has not produced equity of access: in 2025, only some 51% of adults diagnosed with any mental illness received care in the past year, meaning that nearly half of those with a diagnosed condition went untreated. The growth story is, structurally, one of expanding capacity that has not kept pace with expanding need, a tension that shapes the entire system beneath the aggregate trend line. Affordability eroding as the facility base grows. The infrastructure supporting this system is large but increasingly constrained in its ability to serve those without means. While more than 15,000 mental health treatment facilities operate across the country, the share offering free or reduced-cost treatment has declined since 2021. Insurance status remains a sharp determinant of who receives care: adults covered by Medicaid/CHIP received treatment at the highest rate among insurance categories, at nearly 26%, compared with just over 11% of uninsured adults. This gap indicates that financial barriers, rather than easing as facility numbers grow, continue to concentrate around the same groups already at elevated risk of going untreated. Workforce scarcity and self-reliance sustain the treatment gap. Even where facilities exist, access is constrained by a workforce that is both insufficient and geographically maldistributed, nationally averaging 320 individuals per mental health provider in 2024, with wide variation across states. Projections point to a shortfall of nearly 100,000 psychologists by 2038. On the demand side, the barrier is primarily attitudinal: in 2025,  over two-thirds of adults with unmet treatment needs cited self-reliance as their main reason for not seeking care, while cost was the leading reason among those already diagnosed with a mental illness. By contrast, disaggregating by population shows these dynamics do not compound uniformly: among veterans, over 49% with any mental illness went untreated, in line with the national rate, while the comparable share among LGB adults was lower still; both groups, however, showed markedly wider gaps when the condition was a substance use disorder. This indicates unmet need is shaped as much by disorder type as by group identity, and that the overall treatment gap reflects overlapping structural and behavioral forces rather than an infrastructure shortfall alone. What This Means. The structural story of U.S. mental health treatment is one of a system growing in footprint while the underlying imbalance between demand and supply deepens. Demand for mental health services is projected to increase by nearly 50 percent by 2033, while the workforce is expected to grow by only around 11 percent over the same period, a gap the current training and licensure pipeline is structurally unable to close in the near term. Telehealth has partially mitigated geographic constraints, and Medicare flexibilities for behavioral telehealth are now permanent.  However, evidence increasingly indicates that virtual care largely substitutes for existing in-person visits rather than drawing in those not previously receiving care, limiting its capacity to reach the most underserved populations. The barriers keeping the largest share of untreated adults outside the system, including the belief that one should manage mental health independently, cost sensitivity, and provider scarcity, are not primarily responsive to delivery-channel innovation. Whether integrated care models and evolving reimbursement structures can address these more entrenched barriers at scale remains materially uncertain.

Measles cases in the United States climbed to 2,276 in 2025, the highest annual total since 1992, marking a resurgence of a disease once brought under control through routine vaccination. This increase reflects a broader shift: vaccination coverage has declined across most childhood immunization programs in recent years. Among kindergarteners, coverage for both the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and polio vaccines fell to 92.5 percent in the 2024/25 school year, the lowest levels recorded since 2011 and below the level typically needed to prevent measles outbreaks. Vaccines have sharply reduced the burden of infectious disease. Routine vaccination has dramatically reduced the burden of infectious disease in the United States. Before vaccines were introduced, measles caused an estimated 530,217 cases annually; by 2022, reported cases had fallen to just 121. Polio cases declined from 16,316 annually to one. Influenza vaccination alone prevented an estimated 3.1 million illnesses among people aged five to 17 during the 2023/24 season, contributing to nearly 9.8 million cases prevented across all age groups. These gains illustrate the scale of protection vaccines continue to provide, even as coverage begins to slip. Divided views on vaccine safety and policy. Public opinion on vaccination in the United States is mixed and increasingly divided along political lines. As of February 2025, 62 percent of Democrats viewed vaccines as very safe, compared to 36 percent of Independents and 21 percent of Republicans. The divide extends to perceptions of risk. In April 2025, 89 percent of Democrats said the benefits of childhood vaccines outweigh the risks, compared with 67 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Independents. Views on vaccine policy are similarly split. As of March 2026, 41 percent of adults supported reducing the number of vaccines received in the United States, while 29 percent opposed such a reduction. Non-medical exemptions have nearly doubled since 2020. As vaccination coverage has declined, exemptions have risen. The share of kindergarteners with at least one vaccine exemption reached 3.6 percent in 2024/25, more than double the 1.6 percent recorded in 2011/12. Non-medical exemptions, which cover religious and personal objections, accounted for 3.4 percent of kindergarteners, while medical exemptions held steady at 0.2 percent. Exemptions have increased each year since 2020, with non-medical exemptions driving most of the rise. Taken together, the data points to a vaccination system under growing strain. As recent measles cases in the U.S. show, maintaining high vaccination coverage remains essential to preventing the return of diseases already largely contained in the country.

Mental health and substance use conditions are increasingly recognized as major contributors to the global burden of disease and to an increased risk of mortality. Diagnostic frameworks continue to evolve to better support appropriate and ethical care, encompassing a broad range of conditions including mood disorders, psychoses, personality disorders, addictions, and neurodevelopmental disorders. Global mental health efforts place growing emphasis on awareness, reducing stigma, and protecting human rights. In the coming years, mental health and psychosocial support systems are expected to continue developing in response to ongoing challenges such as disruptions in continuity of care, persistent human rights concerns, rising social tensions, and the lasting mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Burden of disease and loss of life. Mental health conditions and substance use disorders account for more years lived with disability (YLD) than all other major non-communicable diseases combined, exceeding the total burden of diabetes, kidney diseases, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, and cancer. Depression and anxiety alone represent a substantial share of this burden. When considering disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), these two conditions account for around 2.5 times as many DALYs as the following three disorders combined. The overall burden is further intensified by associated physical health conditions, mainly digestive and cardiovascular diseases. Beyond the impact on disease burden, mental health conditions and substance use disorders are also associated with an increased risk of mortality. Suicide represents a significant public health concern linked to mental and psychosocial health and can affect people across all age groups. Other mental health related causes of death include eating disorders and substance use. The importance of governmental policies. Given the strong impact that mental health and substance use conditions play on people's overall wellbeing, adequate government policies become increasingly important. Laws specifically addressing mental health, data collection programs, resource allocation strategies, all targeted and associated policies matter. It is estimated that the mental health disease burden averted through scaling proven interventions worldwide will come close to 150 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) by 2050. Therapeutic measures alone account for roughly four-fifths of this total, while prevention and risk reduction measures contribute around a fifth. Psychotherapy and the use of psychiatric medications would together make up over half the overall value of DALYs averted. Mental health and substance use disorders are a major public health priority. Measures aimed at improving these conditions have effects that extend beyond the mental health sphere, also benefiting physical health and overall wellbeing. The most effective government policies are those that address multiple dimensions and reflect the complexity and interconnected nature of the sector, yet government mental health budgets worldwide remain heavily concentrated in psychiatric hospital care, leaving prevention and community-based services comparatively underfunded.

In 2023, diabetes mellitus caused over two million deaths worldwide, making it the sixtth leading cause of death. Furthermore, it is estimated that nearly 590 million people are currently living with diabetes around the world, with this number projected to rise to some 850 million by the year 2050. Diabetes describes a group of metabolic diseases which cause high blood sugar levels. There are three types of diabetes: type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and gestational diabetes. However, the majority of diabetes cases are type 2, with an estimated 90 to 95 percent of diabetes cases in the United States type 2. Risk factors for type 2 diabetes include being overweight, being physically inactive, being 45 and older, and having prediabetes.  Which countries have the highest prevalence of diabetes? Interestingly, the countries with the highest prevalence of diabetes can be found in the Middle East and on islands in the Pacific. For example, on the Marshall Islands around a quarter of all adults have diabetes. In comparison,  diabetes prevalence in OECD countries remains much lower. However, the United States reports figures significantly above average for OECD countries with a prevalence of almost 16 percent. About 29 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with diabetes, with the real number of people living with the disease estimated to be even higher. In the United States, a disproportionately large number of people in the Southern states suffer from diabetes. Expenditure and market. Diabetes not only contributes to a substantial loss of life, but also has a heavy economic burden. Worldwide, health care expenditure due to diabetes was estimated at over one trillion U.S. dollars in 2024. The  countries that spend the highest amount per diabetes patient are Switzerland, the United States, and Norway. In 2021, the United States spent around 10,500 U.S. dollars per patient with diabetes. Thus, diabetes treatment is also a huge pharmaceutical submarket. Some of the leading companies in this market include Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi. Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug Ozempic is one of the best-selling drugs worldwide and has become a full-scale pop culture phenomenon over the last few years, since its effect on weight loss turned viral especially through Hollywood and social media. The future of diabetes. The prevalence of diabetes is forecast to increase in every region of the world over the next couple decades, with the largest increases expected in North Africa and the Middle East. By 2040, China and India are predicted to have  the highest number of diabetics worldwide, with a combined 325 million people with the disease. Individual choices such as exercising and eating a healthy diet can prevent developing diabetes, so a large part of the responsibility for decreasing the burden of this disease lies among individuals. However, the prevalence of obesity is expected to increase worldwide, highlighting the challenges in combating not only diabetes, but the various other health conditions associated with being overweight and obese.

Halloween, also known as All Hallowe'en or All Hallows' Eve, is a holiday celebration that takes place on October 31 each year. And while Halloween has dark origins spanning hundreds of years, it has evolved into more of a commercial tradition, in which people dress up, carve out pumpkins, and children haunt their neighbors in the hopes of acquiring confectionery. Despite its commercial turn, the holiday still means something to plenty of Americans: a recent survey found that more than half of consumers considered Halloween to be at least somewhat important to them in 2026. Get out your costumes. These traditions are especially common in the United States, where planned Halloween spending is set to reach a new all-time high in 2026, surpassing the previous year's record. It was also found that many American consumers prepared for the event quite early on. For Halloween shopping overall, for instance, roughly a third of shoppers began looking in September, while the largest share waited until October. Whether it be for adults, children, or their pet(s), consumers spend a considerable amount of money on spooky outfits, with projected Halloween costume expenditure amounting to a total of nearly 4.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2026. Insidious traditions. In 2026, about four in five consumers in the United States said they planned to take part in some kind of Halloween activity. Some of the most common ways to honor the holiday in the United States included watching horror films, decorating one's home and/or yard, and carving pumpkins. The prevailing tradition still involves candy. Roughly a third of Americans planned to hand out sweets and treats on that fateful evening in October. Trick-or-treating remains a family favorite too, drawing children and adults alike into the yearly hunt for the best costume ideas and the scariest front-yard display. Spend of the living dead. Although Halloween is a major seasonal event celebrated each and every year, it is far from the most costly consumer spending event. When it comes to the amount people are willing to part with, planned Halloween budgets look modest next to Christmas, where a far larger share of shoppers expect to spend over 100 U.S. dollars. Shopping habits are shifting too, as artificial intelligence quietly works its way into holiday planning: a 2026 survey found that nearly all Halloween shoppers now lean on some form of AI assistance when brainstorming costumes, researching products, or comparing prices. It is yet another sign that even a centuries-old tradition keeps finding new ways to spook, and shop, its way into modern life.

When shopping for beauty products, the store of choice plays a very big role for consumers worldwide. In the United States, one of the largest markets in the cosmetics industry, Ulta Beauty dominates as one of the leading beauty retailers of the country. Previously known as Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc., and often referred to as simply "Ulta", the company has been offering both high-end and low-end cosmetic and personal care products since 1990. As of 2025, Ulta Beauty boasted more than 1,505 stores across the United States, a much higher figure compared to just ten years before. Moreover, Ulta's expansion is not expected to stop anytime soon: the company has, in fact, recently acquired British beauty retailer Space NK. Ulta Beauty’s role in the market. Between 2011 and 2024, the Ulta Beauty’s net sales mostly experienced steady growth, reaching a peak in 2025, with over 12.3 billion dollars, while net income went from 120.3 million to 1.15 billion U.S. dollars in the same timespan. In the first quarter of 2026, Ulta's net sales demonstrated further growth compared to the previous year, with an increase of around  6.6 percent. Thanks to its positive financial results, the company also appeared in a ranking of the leading cosmetics and beauty companies based on market capitalization in the United States. E-commerce and online presence. As of 2025, Ulta Beauty was also one of the leading beauty e-commerce in the United States, with online net sales amounting to about 2.5 billion U.S. dollars. Ulta Beauty’s online presence is indeed strong, and in April 2026, ulta.com registered over  28 million monthly visits in the United States, making it one of the leading beauty retailer websites in the country. Furthermore, in 2025, Ulta Beauty also gained second place as Gen Z’s favorite destination for in-store shopping, followed by Target.  As the beauty industry keeps on growing, physical and online beauty retailers like Ulta Beauty can be expected to also continue thriving and to remain among the most visited shopping destinations by consumers.

Halloween is an ancient festival with Celtic origins, traditionally believed to be the day on which the souls of those who had died that year progressed to the underworld. Following America's lead, Halloween has become a bigger deal in the UK, though its popularity still varies by household. The prevalence of Halloween traditions, such as wearing costumes, trick-or-treating and carving out pumpkins, have led to large amounts of consumer spending. This spending has increased more than five times since 2013, with  Halloween spending in the UK projected at around 1.16 billion British pounds in 2026, the highest number in recorded history. A Night Built on Sweets and Costumes. Sweets for trick-or-treating remain the most popular Halloween purchase in the UK, ahead of decorations, costumes and pumpkins alike. Fancy dresses are also a firm favourite: shoppers who plan a costume typically budget around 39 British pounds, a close second to spending on a Halloween-themed day out, which averages roughly 42 pounds and tops the list of Halloween spending categories, while decorations and festive food and drink trail a little further behind. Despite the well-known tradition of carving out pumpkins on Halloween, roughly a quarter of shoppers now plan to pick one up, a notable share even if sweets and treats remain the bigger draw. Who's Still Feeling the Halloween Spirit. The idea of Halloween as one of the UK's biggest cultural events invites a sharper look at who actually takes part. As of September 2026, 42 percent of UK adults say they don't plan on taking part in any Halloween activities this year, while the remaining celebrators are fairly evenly split between watching Halloween-themed films, decorating their homes and handing out sweets to trick-or-treaters, each chosen by between 15 and 23 percent of respondents. That leaves a shrinking but still sizeable core of enthusiasts carrying much of the UK's Halloween spirit. Generation-wise, Millennials and Gen Z keep the Halloween tradition afloat: both age groups spent on average between 32 and 36 British pounds on Halloween in 2026, while the budget was just five pounds for Baby Boomers.  A Mixed Picture for Retailers. This split mirrors how UK shoppers feel about the occasion's overall importance: 31 percent call it very unimportant to them, while only 16 percent see it as very important, pointing to a holiday that excites a passionate minority more than the wider population. For retailers, the takeaway is clear: the strongest returns likely come from doubling down on committed, high-spending shoppers rather than chasing mass appeal, since Halloween's financial growth and its emotional pull in Britain are no longer moving in quite the same direction.

The Volvo Group is a prominent global manufacturer of trucks, buses, and construction equipment. Based in Gothenburg, the commercial vehicle company recorded global revenue of 479.18 billion Swedish kronor in 2025, which marked the second consecutive year that the Group had a decrease in revenue. Accordingly, the Group's operating profit  has also suffered: in 2025, operating profit decreased by 28 percent from the previous year and stood at 37 percent lower than the figure recorded in 2023. The Group's global workforce has also experienced a downturn, going from 91,372 in 2024 to 88,000 employees in the following year. Trucks anchor the business. When looking at the share of sales by segment, trucks are the dominant force in the Volvo Group, generating 323.46 billion kronor in net sales in fiscal year 2025. This was more than four times higher than the figure contributed by the second largest segment - construction equipment. However, sales volumes for trucks have also suffered in recent years, having decreased at around the same rate as revenue and operating profit:  global truck deliveries dropped to 202.91 thousand units in 2025, down from 219.38 thousand units in 2024. Meanwhile, in construction equipment, Volvo held a 3.5 percent share of the global construction equipment market, trailing market leader Caterpillar at 15.9 percent. A Europe-led, competitive market. In geographical terms, Europe accounted for 43 percent of the  Volvo Group's sales  in 2025, well ahead of North America's 29 percent. Among industry rivals also based Europe, there has likewise been a slowdown in financial performance, with Daimler Truck's annual revenue falling to 49.87 billion euros in 2025 from 54.08 billion euros in 2024. On infrastructure, the rivals have nevertheless cooperated: Volvo Group, Daimler Truck, and Traton jointly operate a public charging network, Milence, for battery-electric trucks across Europe, aligning with EU carbon-neutral freight targets. A company-specific headwind, not an industry-wide downturn. Volvo Group's declining profit and delivery volumes are not mirrored across the broader commercial vehicle sector. In 2025, worldwide commercial vehicle production climbed to around 27.93 million units, up from 24.83 million units in 2024, a decade high following the pandemic-era slump. Meanwhile, North America remained the world's  top vehicle-producing region, building roughly 13.15 million commercial vehicles that year. However, Europe's heavy truck output and  Volvo's own research and development spending decreasing over the same period pointed to a regional and company-specific headwind rather than a sector-wide retreat. With trucks still generating the bulk of net sales and a diversified regional footprint, Volvo Group is positioned to benefit if European demand recovers in step with the broader global market.

As a home away from home, hotels play a significant role in many travelers' lives. From luxurious resorts to budget chains, there are hotels to match all consumer needs. Some establishments are even known across the world, such as the classic Waldorf Astoria in New York or the awe-inspiring Burj Al Arab Jumeirah in Dubai. While other accommodation options like Airbnb have become extremely popular, hotels are still a huge business globally. In 2025, the hotel market's revenue worldwide was estimated at around 363 billion U.S. dollars, showing an increase over the previous year. Global hotel occupancy rates have also continued climbing in recent years, nearing pre-pandemic levels. What are the biggest hotel companies in the world? Battling for the top spot are a few key players in the hotel industry. When looking at the leading global hotel brands by value, Hilton ranked first, with a brand value of over 15 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Meanwhile, in a ranking of the leading hotel and resort companies worldwide by sales, Marriott International took the leading spot, with sales amounting to roughly 26.6 billion U.S. dollars. While sales and brand value are important indicators, they are not the only figures that can be used to measure a hotel company's success. For instance, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts narrowly edged out Marriott International and comfortably outpaced Hilton in a ranking of the hotels with the most properties worldwide, reporting almost 9,300 units in 2025. These rankings underline how brand strength, revenue scale, and property count each capture a different side of competitive success in the industry. Markets with the most hotel projects in the pipeline worldwide. The number of hotels in the construction pipeline worldwide that were already under construction was around 6,250 in 2025. Some regions, however, were predicted to experience stronger growth than others. As of 2025, the United States and China were by far the countries with the highest number of hotel projects, and the two markets also led the way for new rooms entering the pipeline. It therefore comes as no surprise that the top five cities with the most rooms in the construction pipeline worldwide were located in these two markets. How artificial intelligence is changing day-to-day hotel operations. Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of daily hotel operations, from guest-facing chatbots to behind-the-scenes automation. In a 2025 global survey, automated guest communications ranked as the AI application hotel chains used most often today, already reaching travelers before and during their stay. Looking ahead, hotel chains saw the greatest innovation potential in AI assistants capable of reactive, round-the-clock interactions with guests and staff. At the same time, customer data management stood out, alongside guest engagement and reservations and call center support, as one of the business areas where hotel chains most commonly planned to expand their use of AI in the next one to two years. Together, these trends suggest that today's chatbots are only the first step toward a broader, data-driven transformation of hotel operations.

Liverpool FC is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in world football. Founded in 1892, the Reds' trophy cabinet boasts an impressive six UEFA Champions League titles as well as 20 English top-flight titles. This sporting success has contributed to the club amassing a large global fanbase, with Liverpool's cumulative TV audience for 2023/24 amounting to over 470 million. Tickets are unsurprisingly in high demand, and those lucky enough to have a season ticket had to part with at least 713 British pounds in 2025/26 - one of the top five most expensive prices in the Premier League. What is Liverpool FC’s annual revenue? Liverpool rank among the clubs with the highest revenues in world football, generating a total of 836 million euros in the 2024/25 season. Such a high profile means the club is able to attract lucrative sponsors, with the Reds' revenue from shirt sponsorship amounting to 50 million British pounds a season. When looking at a breakdown of Liverpool’s revenue for 2024/25, 'commercial' represented the largest revenue stream, contributing over 365 million euros to the club's coffers.  Who is Liverpool FC’s best player of all time? Many footballing legends have played for the Reds over the years. Liverpool’s top scorer is Ian Rush, who scored 346 goals for the club across all competitions. Meanwhile, the player with the most appearances for Liverpool is Ian Callaghan, who won two European Cups with the club in the mid-1970s. Nowadays, the club still boasts some of football’s most talented players, and having made a positive start under the Spanish trainer Andoni Iraola, the future certainly looks rosy for the Reds.

What started as a humble kickstarter in New York has grown into a worldwide phenomenon. Indeed, Peloton has very rapidly become synonymous with home fitness and exercise. While the company's main product is a stationary exercise bike, it has also subsequently launched a state-of-the-art treadmill range as well as a rowing machine. These are all equipped with signature display monitors where customers can enjoy access to training classes and entertainment via a subscription from the comfort of their own homes. Peloton's global takeover. The company originally retailed only in the United States, but has since expanded into Canada and parts of Europe. Despite this expansion, Peloton’s revenue generated in different regions of the world showed that sales in North America still constituted the largest share of the company’s profits. The company as a whole enjoyed positive growth in revenue during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which forced fitness fanatics into finding ways of staying in shape at home through various forms of home fitness regimes. As a result, Peloton’s annual revenue worldwide peaked in 2021, but this trend has since tapered off, and the company’s yearly revenue has declined continuously from 2022 to 2026. Nonetheless, during the latest fiscal years, the company managed to stop the steep decline, with revenues in 2026 settling at around 2.4 billion U.S. dollars. However, one positive aspect for the fitness company is that annual subscription revenue reached over 1.65 billion U.S. dollars in the 2026 fiscal year, approximately double the revenue when compared to 2021. Peloton's online offering. In fact, Peloton's online monthly subscription service plays an integral part in the company's business model, accounting for a share of over 65 percent of Peloton's revenue worldwide. This subscription service gives users access to remote fitness classes, often led by Peloton's celebrity instructors in categories such as strength, stretching, and cycling. This subscription service saw its user numbers worldwide reach almost three million for the first time in 2023, but since that year the number declined to 2.55 million in 2026.  Indeed, as with any successful company, the appeal of Peloton is broad, with the age breakdown of Peloton users relatively evenly split among the generations, with notably only the 18-24 category showing little interest in the product. However, if the company wants to recreate its golden years during the pandemic, it will have to keep these users coming back by offering new and exciting ways of staying fit at home.

The global pharmaceutical market is to a large degree driven by its top pharmaceutical products. The same is true for the leading pharmaceutical companies, which generate a large share of their revenue from their top drug brands. For example, in 2025, U.S.-based Merck & Co. generated close to half of its pharmaceutical revenue through its top cancer drug, Keytruda. In the same year, Keytruda brought in close to 32 billion U.S. dollars, making it once again the best-selling pharmaceutical product worldwide. A new generation of blockbusters. Biotechnology is becoming more and more the leading technology within the pharmaceutical industry: biotech-derived treatments now account for roughly 40 percent of global pharmaceutical sales. Although not a drug in the classic sense, the biotech-derived mRNA vaccine Comirnaty, developed jointly by German-based BioNTech and U.S. giant Pfizer, once ranked among the highest-grossing pharmaceutical products ever recorded during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. When it comes to the biggest current hype in the pharmaceutical market, the answer is clear: weight loss drugs. Products like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound show the highest growth among blockbuster drugs, with  the global GLP-1 drug market projected to reach some 135 billion U.S. dollars by 2030. The biggest all-timers: Humira and Lipitor. With revenue of around 4.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, AbbVie's rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira has slipped behind AbbVie's newer products Skyrizi and Rinvoq, which have taken over as the company's biggest earners. Humira's fall has been steep: back in 2022, the drug still generated over 21 billion U.S. dollars in worldwide revenue, before the loss of patent exclusivity triggered a rapid decline in the years that followed. Pfizer's cholesterol drug Lipitor underwent a similar story in the 2000s, losing its position as the world's top-selling drug once its patent expired. Even so, Lipitor and Humira remain among the  leading drugs by lifetime sales worldwide, and Keytruda has recently joined Humira as the only other drug to pass the 200-billion-dollar mark in cumulative revenue. Performance in the U.S. is essential. For years, AbbVie's Humira was also among the top drugs based on U.S. revenue, and it still narrowly holds a spot on that list today. The drug has been generating the overwhelming part of its revenues in the United States, where prices for drugs are much higher. Due to their significantly lower prices, generics are always the top-selling pharmaceutical products when measured by dispensed prescriptions. In 2024, there were over  115 million prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. for the cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin, the generic version of the above-mentioned Lipitor, underlining just how much cheaper copies continue to dominate everyday prescribing even as branded blockbusters chase the next big breakthrough.

It took one prototype called the "Shorty" to propel one Baltimore-based sporting goods business through the ranks. Under Armour started with a simple plan to make a superior T-shirt. A shirt that provided compression and took perspiration off your skin rather than absorb it. A shirt that worked with your body to regulate temperature and enhance performance. Under Armour is the originator of performance apparel - sportswear engineered to keep athletes cool, dry, and light throughout the course of a game, practice, or workout. Over the years, the company has grown and expanded significantly, generating a total of  five billion U.S. dollars in global net revenue in its 2026 fiscal year. From humble beginnings to one of the major players. Under Armour, Inc. is an American sporting goods manufacturer that supplies athletic and casual apparel, as well as footwear. Although it was founded in 1996, and is therefore much younger than established athletic apparel market leaders Nike and adidas, Under Armour generated the seventh-highest revenue of athletic apparel, accessories and footwear globally, making it one of the most valuable sports business brands in the world today. Key figures of Under Armour. As of 2026, Under Armour employed an estimated 14 thousand people and has offices and locations all over the world. Many of the company’s stores are located in the United States. At just below three billion U.S. dollars’ worth of net revenue in fiscal year 2026, this is also where Under Armour  generates the majority of its sales. The manufacturer’s most lucrative product category is its apparel segment, which represented approximately two-thirds of Under Armour’s total sales. Footwear, on the other hand, only accounted for about a quarter of the company’s net sales, which is a contrast compared to some of the company's main competitors. Trade policies and inflation make it difficult to predict what the next year will look like for many companies, including Under Armour, however, despite recent turbulencies, the company seemed to manage efficiently in 2026.

One of the leading worries associated with the consumption of food is health. What and how much a person eats can have a significant impact on their quality of life. To maintain and improve their health, consumers regularly change their diets. They cut down on ingredients and food products that are seen as unhealthy, while increasing their intake of food that seems healthy to them. In the United Kingdom, around half of survey respondents stated that they attempted to eat healthily. Consumer concerns about food. Being able to eat healthily is on the mind of about half of UK consumers, as concern about healthy eating still ranks fairly low among their food-related worries. Several other concerns, such as food prices, rank higher. Consumers also look out for food hygiene when eating out, overall food quality, and possible food poisoning. Many of them also keep a close eye on how much sugar and salt is in their food. To navigate these issues, consumers often rely on food label systems, paying particular attention to claims such as low or no added sugar when shopping. The ongoing cost-of-living pressures have added to these concerns: over a third of UK shoppers now say they are cutting food waste at home to save money, while others have switched to own-brand groceries instead of giving up on healthier choices. Hyper-processed food. Recently, ultra-processed food or hyper-processed food has been a hot topic in the U.S. and the UK. Hyper-processed food products contain a high number of ingredients. They are made with additives that are almost exclusively used in industrial-scale food production. These might encompass sweeteners, preservatives, artificial aromas, artificial colors, and others. Additionally, the food products are processed multiple times. Processes include grinding, milling, extruding, and others. Hyper-processed foods typically contain high levels of ingredients that are already viewed as undesirable by consumers, such as salt, sugar, and saturated fats. The high degree of processing allows the digestion to pick up more of these ingredients than from less processed foods. Nowadays, concern about the health impact of ultra-processed food runs even higher, with around eight in ten UK consumers saying they worry about it, and many say they have cut back on such products as a result. Convenience still wins out for some: around three in ten UK shoppers say ready-made food offers good value, and some prefer it to cooking from scratch. Others try to avoid heavily processed products by buying organic instead, though over a third say the cost of organic food keeps them from buying more. As sugar, salt, and processed ingredients stay in the spotlight, these worries keep shaping how people in the UK eat and shop.

Mental health and artificial intelligence are two of the most prominent conversations in recent years. For World Mental Health Day, Statista asked adults in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany how they are already engaging with AI for their mental well-being: who is using it, what for, how often, and whether it actually helps. Mental health goes digital: quietly, and at scale. The numbers are striking. More than half of adults in all three markets—57% in the U.S., 56% in the UK, and 57% in Germany—already use AI tools for mental well-being. That consistency across three major developed markets is one of the more remarkable findings: whatever is driving people toward AI for personal support, it appears to transcend national context. Mental health itself ranks among the top personal challenges cited across all three markets, named by roughly one in four adults. The two facts together set the scene for what follows. Not therapy, something more everyday. What people are actually using AI for matters as much as the fact that they are using it at all. The leading reason, across all three markets, is advice and guidance, cited by around 30% of all respondents. Stress and anxiety reduction, talking through personal concerns, learning more about mental health, and personal reflection follow. In Germany, distraction also registers as a notable secondary use. The pattern is consistently practical: not clinical. People are using AI as an everyday thinking partner to process decisions, manage pressure, and make sense of what they are going through. Same adoption, different conviction. Beneath the uniform adoption figures, the experience diverges considerably. In the U.S. and UK, around seven in ten AI users find these tools at least somewhat helpful, with roughly a third calling them very helpful. In Germany, overall helpfulness drops to 57%, with only one in five rating AI as very helpful and more than one in four remaining neutral. Germany is showing up at the same rate as the other two markets, but with measurably less conviction. Within that picture, one detail stands out: in Germany, it is low-income users who are the most intensive and the most positive, using AI more frequently and rating it more helpful than their higher-income peers. In a market where AI is overall the most cautiously received, the strongest endorsement comes, perhaps surprisingly, from its lowest-income users. Who is using it, and who is not. The demographic contrasts across markets add further texture. In the UK and Germany, 18–29-year-olds are the most active users, leading in adoption, frequency, and breadth of use, with a majority engaging several times a week or more. In the U.S., the lead shifts to adults aged 30–49, the most intensive daily users and the most convinced of AI's value. In this survey, women are less likely to use AI for mental well-being and are less convinced it helps when they do. This is interesting in light of a separate Statista survey showing that women report mental health as a personal challenge more frequently than men across all three markets. That gap between need and engagement is one of the more thought-provoking findings in the data. Summary. The picture that emerges is coherent, if uneven. Across three developed markets, a majority of adults are already using AI as part of how they manage their inner lives: regularly, purposefully, and well below the clinical threshold. The use cases cluster around guidance, reflection, and stress management—the everyday, unglamorous work of staying functional and self-aware. That is a meaningful finding in itself: AI is not waiting for a clinical mandate to become part of how people cope. It is already there. What varies considerably is the quality of that experience. Trust is unevenly distributed, by country, by age, by income, and by gender, and the gap between those who find real value in these tools and those who remain unconvinced or underengaged is a question the data raises but cannot answer. Uptake is no longer the story. What happens next, for the many different groups now reaching for these tools, is.

While countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) might be primarily associated with the oil industry, the last two decades have seen their aviation industries boom. Well-positioned geographically as a major hub for international travel, the development of the region's infrastructure in that period has extended to tourism and aviation. This is exemplified in Dubai International Airport becoming the second most-visited airport globally by international travelers, with over 95 million visits in 2025. Duly, several airlines in the region have established themselves among the most valuable airline brands worldwide, with Emirates and Qatar Airways ranking third and seventh, respectively, in 2026. Where GCC airlines truly excel, however, is in customer experience, with four of the five top airlines by customer satisfaction in 2025 coming from the region. Emirates – the crown jewel of GCC aviation. Established in Dubai in 1985, the Emirates Group is the dominant player in GCC aviation. The Group's revenue increased to 150.46 billion Emirati dirhams in the 2025/26 financial year, roughly 41 billion U.S. dollars, which translated to an operating income of 24.17 billion Emirati dirhams in the same period. Both figures were the highest on record, coming despite a decline in passenger numbers in 2025/26, pointing to an increase in passenger yield. Qatar Airways increases profits. Qatar Airways followed Emirates in increasing operating profit, despite a reduction in passengers in the 2025/26 financial year. Where Qatar Airways differed, however, was recording a lower revenue that year than the previous one, generating 83.75 billion Qatar Riyals in 2025/26, around 23 billion U.S. dollars, roughly three percent lower than in 2024/25. Lower jet fuel costs during the year likely supported this margin improvement. Smaller GCC carriers post accelerating growth. Beyond the two flagship carriers, other GCC-based airlines are expanding quickly. Air Arabia, the region's low-cost pioneer, reported total revenue of 7.79 billion Emirati dirhams in 2025. Etihad Airways has also strengthened its position, with annual revenue climbing to 8.4 billion U.S. dollars in the same year, pointing to broader momentum across the region's carriers beyond the two largest groups. What does the future hold for the aviation industry in the GCC? With the aviation industry being highly interdependent with the tourism and oil industries, it follows that the U.S.-Israel war with Iran has hit all three fields hard. Regarding tourism, the proximity of GCC countries to the conflict has lessened the allure of visiting the region, with tourist arrivals in the GCC projected to fall by as much as 26 percent in 2026 under a prolonged-conflict scenario, reversing an expected 8 percent gain. Meanwhile, global jet fuel prices are forecast to rise by nearly 70 percent in 2026 over the previous year. With airspace restrictions added on top of these pressures, the aviation industry in the GCC is facing a period of turbulence.

The content on the World Wide Web is divided into three parts: surface web, deep web, and dark web. The surface web is the part of the internet content that is available to everyone via regular browsers. The deep web is hidden behind passwords, such as e-mail accounts, online banking accounts, and a great deal of other content that is not reachable via search engines. The dark web is a small part of the deep web. It represents the content posted on the darknets, which are censorship-resistant networks that enable private communication. The most well-known software for dark web access is the Tor network. Other examples of such networks include Freenet, I2P, and Riffle. Tor – encryption at every stage. The Onion Router (Tor) was created in 2002. It is a free, publicly available software that enables anonymous communication online. It generates online content via an overlay network, a type of network that is layered over another network which makes tracking an individual’s online activity more difficult. Tor’s prominent concept is onion routing. This means routing the internet traffic through at least three relay servers and encrypting it at every stage. It allows each server only to see where the data came from and its next step. Created in 2008, the Tor browser is widely used around the world. As of September 2023, more than two million people in Germany used Tor daily. As of September 2023, Germany had more than 50 percent of Tor users, while the United States ranked second, with around 13 percent. In the meantime, the highest number of those connecting Tor using bridges or non-public servers was registered in Russia. Illicit activity on the dark web. The initial purpose of darknets, escaping surveillance, has in many ways helped people in countries where government censorship is a big concern. However, the dark web has very quickly become a place with more illegal content. Today, this part of the World Wide Web is mainly associated with the illicit trade of weapons, illegal drugs, various cyberattack services, forged documents, personal data and credentials stolen in cyberattacks, and illegal digital products. In 2022, the total value received by darknet markets and fraud shops worldwide amounted to 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, down from 3.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. Furthermore, the share of illegal transactions in total cryptocurrency transactions worldwide in 2022 was 0.24 percent. Job postings on dark web. Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, people worldwide have lost jobs and turned to the dark web for opportunities to make money remotely. On dark web job markets, developers were on the highest demand. However, the highest median monthly salary of promised jobs on the dark web was for reverse engineers with almost 4,000 U.S. dollars. Do people know what dark web is? As of September 2023, search interest in the term “dark web” on Google Search was 60 out of 100 relative index points, which is down from its peak in April 2020. An October 2022 survey found that almost half of the responding adults in the United States said they were somewhat familiar with the dark web. On the contrary, 55 percent of adults said in another survey they did not understand the dark web. Moreover, on the global scale, 70 percent did not understand the dark web.

Despite efforts to reduce its usage on a global scale, coal still accounts for more than one fourth of primary energy consumption, with its shares having stagnated for much of the past decade. Coal use is especially prevalent in the power sector, where it remains the world’s largest source of electricity generation. As of mid-2025, there are more than 2,400 individual active coal power plants in the world. This stagnation contrasts with efforts to accelerate the shift toward renewables, underscoring how deeply embedded coal remains in the global energy mix. Coal use today and most common tech types installed. As coal is often one of the cheapest and most secure means of obtaining electricity, it has been favored by many fast-growing economies such as China and India. In fact, the use of coal power in China has increased so much over the past three decades that it has become the largest producer of coal-fired power worldwide. In 2025, China generated over 5,700 terawatt-hours of electricity from burning coal, which accounted for more than half of the world's coal power production. Other economies such as India have also ramped up coal-based generation to meet rising electricity demand. Subcritical and supercritical combustion types have historically been the most installed technologies in a coal power station. Subcritical was the first type of coal power generating process developed. However, since then more efficient means of combustion, as well as carbon capture techniques have been introduced, with ultra-super being the preferred choice today. Capacity plateaus as the financing picture shifts. Global installed coal power capacity has risen to over 2.3 terawatts and is projected to plateau in the coming years. Many governments have introduced phase-out dates to be reached before mid-century to reduce their carbon footprint and mitigate climate change. Nevertheless, as of 2025, there was still more than 240 gigawatts of coal capacity under construction worldwide. Chinese financial institutions such as China CITIC Bank have remained among the top financiers of coal mining companies in recent years. These dynamics suggest that while the pace of new coal construction is slowing, the fuel's financial and operational footprint will likely persist for years to come.

It all started as an expensive revenge project following the largest ad company’s ousting of its founder. S4 Capital was founded by Sir Martin Sorrell in May 2018, with the ambition to build up a digital-first, content creation-focusing advertising leader. Earlier in 2018, Sorrell was expelled from WPP, the holding he founded, due to allegations that he paid for a sex worker using company funds. By 2024, S4 Capital established itself as a reputable player in the digital ad world – only to be hit by the tech sector’s ongoing marketing cutbacks. Finances hit by tech belt-tightening. The London-based digital ad company experienced a 16-percent revenue decrease for 2024, while the year before, the group had to face plummeting profits for the fifth year in a row. The company cited worldwide macroeconomic challenges and clients’ reluctance to take on substantial marketing projects as a reason behind the falling numbers. The price of S4 Capital’s shares also decreased significantly from March 2023 to February 2024, going from 162.6 to 40.08 British pounds. Despite the decreasing profits and revenue, the company still announced its first dividend in 2025. Operations play out under one roof. Unlike traditional ad conglomerates, S4 Capital works as a unified organism, with all its digital advertising and marketing services operations carried out within an integrated framework, that of Monks. More than half of the company’s revenue came from its content segment, while data and digital media accounted for nearly a quarter. The Americas contributed the largest share of the company’s global revenue, followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The group’s financial losses spurred it to further cut 541 roles in 2024, as it seeks to improve profitability. Making headway in ESG and AI. Over the past few years, S4 Capital has invested an increasing number of resources in its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) work. In 2023, the company’s net revenue from sustainable projects, defined as "For Good" projects, added up to 42.4 million pounds. To put it into perspective, S4 Capital’s global revenue that year amounted to 848 billion pounds. In 2021, S4 Capital was the first creative and marketing company to sign The Climate Pledge, a division of Amazon set up to advance financing in the climate technology space. The group has also been making moves in artificial intelligence (AI). In March 2024, Monks – the purely digital operating brand of S4 Capital – launched Persona.Flow, a professional managed service that allows brand marketers to talk to their data. With the help of AI, Persona.Flow converts owned consumer data into dynamic consumer personas. In March 2025, Monks partnered with data and AI platform Hightouch to enhance its Customer Data Platform (CDP) and AI capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region. Monks also broke new ground in Europe, creating a hyper-realistic video avatar for Élise Lucet, the host of French TV program Envoyé Spécial. As it navigates a demanding macroeconomic environment in 2025, augmented by global trade tariff worries, S4 Capital is aiming offset its losses through its shift towards AI. While expecting continued caution from its clients, the company is also betting on new businesses that could spark a much-needed turnaround.

Germany currently has the largest population in the EU. It is also home to Europe's largest economy. But how sufficient is its agriculture for the population's needs? The number of agricultural businesses has dwindled significantly. If there were around 904,700 businesses in 1975, in 2024 there were 255,000. On the one hand, in recent years farmers were displeased with new agricultural legislation, which led to the so-called tractor protests around the country. Other issues also influence keeping businesses alive, such as deliveries to and from abroad, as well as hiring workers from other countries during harvest season. On the other hand, industrial and technological advancements have allowed for work which required copious amounts of labor in previous decades to be completed with less human interaction. Employee numbers have been decreasing since the 1990s. Feeding the nation. The self-sufficiency rate is an important indicator of the agricultural sector. It is a percentage of necessary agricultural products produced in a country on its own. A shortage is defined by a self-sufficiency rate under 100 percent, which is when additional imports may be included. In 2024, fresh milk products had a self-sufficiency rate of around 114 percent, thus indicating that Germany is more than able to supply the nation with these products domestically. For comparison, the self-sufficiency rate for fruit was roughly 20 percent that same year, as there are quite a few types that do not grow on German soil, but are still popular and in demand. Low self-sufficiency rates mean that agricultural sectors in other countries may focus especially on certain exports, such as fruit that grows in warmer climates than Germany. In 2023, Germany imported around 14.4 million tons of fresh fruits and vegetables. The price of sustainability. Mixed agriculture was the most profitable segment, followed by grain cultivation (pulses and oilseeds) and agricultural services. Mixed agriculture, more widely known as mixed farming, involves growing crops and raising animals on one property, creating a farm that serves multiple agricultural purposes. Agricultural services include a broad range of activities and are defined by contributing to agricultural production. Progress is being made in organic farming, which becomes ever more relevant in the context of global climate change and ongoing environmental concerns. Organic farming aims to use sustainable methods, relying on non-chemical, natural fertilizers and pesticides. These come from animal and plant waste. The challenges involved include lower yields for producers and therefore higher product prices for consumers. Among the leading expectations of the population from agricultural businesses were animal husbandry appropriate to the species and fair pay for employees. Considering the decreased number of said businesses in the country, the question arises of how much pressure falls on a single business in the context of supplying regional and national demand.

Medical technology is a large and still expanding market. Global medtech market revenue is modeled at about 635 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, with steady growth projected through 2031. The United States holds nearly 48 percent of the global device market, compared with about 26 percent for Europe. This split reflects the depth of high-income healthcare spending in these two regions. It suggests that global demand is closely tied to reimbursement and procurement conditions in just two markets. The Asian-Pacific market is led by China, followed by Japan and South Korea, yet the region starts from a much smaller base. This indicates that any geographic rebalancing is likely to be gradual, with the two established regions continuing to set the pace. Scale concentrates around established leaders. Within this market, medical devices dominate, and individual categories are shaped by a few large players. In the global diagnostic imaging market, General Electric holds about 30 percent of share and Siemens Healthineers some 29 percent, so two companies together control close to three-fifths of the segment. Medtronic, the largest company by revenue, generates its biggest segment in cardiovascular care. This points to a different pattern: depth in one core specialty rather than a head-to-head duopoly. Both are supported by substantial reinvestment, as U.S. and European companies are spending 37 billion U.S. dollars annually on R&D. Spending at this scale is a high hurdle for newcomers and helps explain why a few companies hold large shares. It also increases reliance on a small group of incumbents for innovation, which raises the industry's sensitivity to company-specific setbacks. AI raises the technical and regulatory bar. Innovation is increasingly software-driven. FDA approvals of AI/ML-enabled medtech products rose from just 6 in 2015 to a preliminary figure of roughly 335 in 2025, and GE HealthCare and Siemens Healthineers lead cumulative AI/ML approvals. These are the same two companies that dominate diagnostic imaging, which indicates that AI is currently reinforcing, rather than disrupting, incumbent positions. A growing volume of AI-enabled products also expands the regulatory workload attached to each innovation. For smaller digital players in the EU this is already visible: about 40 percent of EU digital health companies cite the MDR and IVDR among their greatest compliance challenges. This points to a structure in which regulatory capacity becomes a competitive factor in its own right, one that may favor organizations able to spread compliance costs across large portfolios. Strategic outlook. The sector's next phase will likely depend less on demand than on the conditions under which scale is converted into growth. U.S. trade policy remains unsettled: after a Supreme Court ruling curtailed one tariff authority in early 2026, replacement measures followed and a sector-specific investigation remains open. With the U.S. making up nearly half of the global device market, such shifts reach beyond its borders, and because device prices are embedded in procedure reimbursement, costs cannot easily be passed on. In Europe, the AI Act amendment in force keeps medical devices within its high-risk scope, with obligations for AI-enabled devices deferred to 2028. Dual compliance is likely to persist, burdening smaller players while favoring organizations that can spread regulatory effort across large portfolios. AI is becoming part of the incumbents' core offering, not a threat to it: the leading imaging companies hold the largest portfolios of authorized AI devices, among more than 1,600 in the U.S. Reimbursable AI products generate revenue, and as payment models shift from fee-for-service toward outcome- and value-based structures, demonstrated clinical and economic benefit decides which AI products scale. Authorizations remain concentrated in radiology, so it is less clear how quickly the pattern will extend to other specialties; that, together with regulation and payment conditions, will shape whether today's concentration deepens or loosens.

Fossil fuels are the main source of energy in the world. In 2024, they accounted for over 80 percent of the global primary energy consumption. Renewable energy consumption has grown rapidly in recent years, but these energy sources still play a comparatively small role in the global energy industry. In 2024, renewable energy and hydropower combined contributed only about 15 percent of the primary energy mix. Meanwhile, coal, oil, and natural gas production has been increasing since the COVID-19 slump in 2020. Crude oil's dominance and coal's grip on power. Crude oil is the most consumed primary energy source in the world. Oil is the main feedstock in motor fuels like gasoline and diesel, as well as the fundamental ingredient of petrochemicals such as plastics and pharmaceuticals. Global crude oil reserves stood at around 1.57 trillion barrels as of 2025, with roughly half of them concentrated in the Middle East. Coal is the second most consumed primary energy fuel. Its consumption is largely driven by electricity demand, as it remains the predominant source of electricity generation worldwide. In 2025, China alone accounted for over half of global coal output, while natural gas production was highest in the United States and Russia. Fossil fuel prices spiked during the 2021-2022 energy crisis but have since stabilized. Natural gas' lower carbon emissions per unit energy compared to coal and oil have prompted several countries to invest in this fuel as a bridge toward cleaner alternatives. Renewables gaining ground, but not fast enough. Biomass is the most used renewable energy source, having accounted for roughly nine percent of the global primary energy demand in 2024. Several prominent economies, including the European Union countries, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Brazil, have committed to a net-zero emissions target by 2050, and annual global renewable energy investment reached approximately 728 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Under a 1.5-degree Celsius scenario, renewables would need to overtake fossil fuels as the leading primary energy source within the next decade. However, as of 2025, the energy policies of the two largest carbon dioxide emitters, China and the United States, were insufficient to achieve the decarbonization objective. Despite growing renewable energy deployment, both countries continued to depend heavily on fossil fuels,  remaining the world's top two CO2 emitters by a wide margin.

Buy now, pay later has moved from a fringe checkout option to a recognized pillar of U.S. digital payments. E-commerce payment methods data shows BNPL captured six percent of U.S. online transaction value in 2025. Up from one percent from three years earlier, as credit cards at 32 percent and digital wallets at 40 percent filled out a crowded field.  Consumer adoption of BNPL grew from 10 percent of U.S. adults in 2021 to 15 percent by 2024. Monthly tracking through 2025 shows usage holding between 14 and 15 percent, a pattern that marks the end of the early-adopter surge and the beginning of something harder to move: a plateau. From niche checkout to mainstream credit instrument. The scale of U.S. BNPL activity is substantial. BNPL loan originations totaled 335.8 million in 2023, up sharply from 19.8 million in 2019, with the average loan size settling at 135 U.S. dollars. The user base has expanded alongside volume, 53.6 million unique Americans used BNPL in 2023, and  BNPL users and their spending data shows average annual spend per user rose 14 percent year-over-year to 848 U.S. dollars. At peak retail moments, BNPL pulls well above its weight: Prime Day BNPL spending reached nearly 2.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2026, nearly three times the 739 million U.S. dollars recorded in 2022. Who uses BNPL, and what the gap reveals. Adoption is not evenly distributed across the U.S. population. BNPL usage by demographics shows that 29 percent of Black consumers and 26 percent of Hispanic consumers used the service in 2025, compared with 12 percent of white consumers. Usage also declines sharply with income, adults earning between 25,000 and 49,999 U.S. dollars reported a 23 percent adoption rate, versus 12 percent among those earning 100,000 U.S. dollars or more. That gap is not incidental. It confirms BNPL’s dual function as both a credit-access bridge for lower-income households and a potential financial vulnerability for those with the least room to absorb a missed payment. Provider scale and credit risk shape the long-term outlook. A small number of global players control most of the market. Klarna reported a gross merchandise volume of 128 billion U.S. dollars and 118 million active users in 2025, while Affirm processed 36.7 billion U.S. dollars across 23 million active users, according to leading BNPL provider comparisons. Credit risk within the sector remains contained for now: Affirm’s delinquency rate for loans 30 or more days past due held steady at 2.8 percent in the third quarter of 2026, below aggregate U.S. credit card delinquency benchmarks. Overall U.S. BNPL transaction value is forecast to reach 258.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2031, up from 107.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. That trajectory guarantees two things: sustained regulatory scrutiny and intensified competition from incumbent lenders and card networks that have spent years watching this market develop. The window for BNPL providers to operate without serious institutional pressure has already closed.

The electricity market in the United States is home to three of the 10 most valuable electric utility companies in the world. Florida-based NextEra Energy led the global utility company ranking as of June 2025, recording a market value of over 136 billion dollars. Electricity sector ownership in the U.S. included roughly 1,700 privately and publicly owned providers in 2023, the most common being cooperatives and municipal. Keeping up with growing consumption. In 2024, retail electricity sales in the U.S. amounted to some 3.96 petawatt-hours, having nearly doubled since the early 1980s. The country's economic sector relies increasingly on the electrification process, both for decarbonization and economic growth. The U.S. is the second-largest electricity producer in the world, ranking only behind China, and has become increasingly less reliant on electricity imports in the past decade. In 2024, it imported roughly 33 terawatt-hours, continuing a downward trend from prior years. The cost of powering American homes and businesses. Electricity prices are influenced by a myriad of factors, including regulations, operating expenses, maintenance of transmission and distribution lines, and costs for fuels such as natural gas and coal. In 2025, the average retail electricity price in the U.S. amounted to about 13.6 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. The residential sector paid the highest price of electricity by sector that same year, at about 17.3 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. The industrial electricity price in the country was roughly half that of the residential price. A grid bracing for surging demand. The price of electricity for the residential and commercial sectors in the U.S. has historically been greater than that for industries, as distribution to the latter is more efficient due to the higher voltages used. Driven by data centers, electric vehicles, and broader electrification, U.S. electricity use is projected to approach six petawatt-hours by 2050, by which time the capacity of renewables is forecast to quadruple. Meeting that demand will require major investment in generation, transmission, and storage infrastructure.

The personal luxury goods market, traditionally reliant on physical store sales due to the premium shopping experience they offer, has seen a significant shift. Currently, about a fifth of the global personal luxury goods market is generated through online channels, valued at over 76 billion euros. Luxury consumers increasingly choose to make their high-end purchases of apparel, footwear, fragrances, jewelry, and watches via department store websites, brand sites, and online marketplaces. Two titans of the luxury market. The luxury market is dominated by two countries: the United States and China. The U.S. leads in overall luxury goods revenue, approaching 96 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, while China follows at roughly 78 billion. The U.S. also dominates the online segment, with e-commerce revenue forecast to surpass 23 billion U.S. dollars in 2026. China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Italy round out the top luxury fashion e-commerce markets, each generating billions in online revenue. AI and personalization reshape the high-end shopping experience. Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly become a transformative force in the luxury market. In 2024, AI was valued at 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in this sector, and estimates indicate it could exceed 5.6 billion by 2034. AI offers numerous opportunities, such as creating a hyper-personalized online shopping experience tailored to individual tastes. Personalization and data-driven services have been identified as the most influential consumer trend in the luxury industry, with one-third of surveyed executives pointing to tailored digital experiences as the key driver. Retail executives widely expect AI-enabled hyper-personalization to become mainstream, and as AI tools and social commerce continue to evolve, they stand to boost conversion rates and reshape how luxury brands connect with buyers.

Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world today and is enjoyed by most age groups. Hot and cold coffee beverages can be produced from a variety of beans and be served in many forms, such as espresso, cappuccino, Americano, etc. Two of the main types of coffee beans include Arabica and Robusta. Due to its caffeine content, many people drink coffee to give themselves an energy boost; however, it is also believed to offer health benefits, such as lowering the risk of liver cancer, protection against Parkinson's disease, and an overall healthier heart. Coffee production worldwide. Throughout the 2024/25 period, over 177 million coffee bags, which consist of 60 kilograms' worth of coffee each, were produced worldwide, making it the marketing year with the highest production numbers so far. Approximately half of the world's coffee gets produced in South America: in 2024/25, close to 87 million 60-kilogram bags were filled in this region, with Brazil remaining the region's dominant grower thanks to its vast highland growing areas. Following the Beans Across Borders. International trade keeps the world's coffee cups full: in the 2024/25 marketing year, around 142 million 60-kilogram bags were imported worldwide while roughly 147 million bags were exported, continuing an upward trend in global coffee trade volumes. The United States remains the largest coffee importer worldwide, having brought in close to 12.8 billion U.S. dollars' worth of beans in 2025, ahead of Germany in second place. On the export side, Brazil ships more coffee than any other country, exporting nearly 15 billion U.S. dollars' worth in 2025 as the leading coffee exporter, with Germany overtaking Switzerland for second place. Coffee has also become a popular fair-trade product, and sustainability certifications continue to expand the production of ethically sourced beans worldwide. Big Brands Behind Your Daily Cup. Major coffee companies play an outsized role in shaping how the world drinks its coffee. Starbucks, the largest coffeehouse chain globally, generated close to 37.2 billion U.S. dollars in worldwide revenue in 2025, while also operating more than 40,000  locations around the globe. Smaller rivals are expanding too, with Canada's Tim Hortons and Italy's Lavazza both posting steady revenue growth in recent years. Together, these companies show how coffee has evolved from a simple morning ritual into a multi-billion-dollar global industry that keeps growing alongside rising consumer demand.

Americans mark the year with a steady rhythm of gift-giving occasions, from Valentine's Day and Mother's Day to the end-of-year holiday season that towers above the rest. Christmas is by far the occasion most consumers prepare for, with nearly nine in ten Americans planning to celebrate it in 2026, followed by Thanksgiving and Mother's Day. The financial weight of this tradition is considerable: average expected spending on holiday gifts surpassed the four-digit mark for two consecutive years by 2025, and Christmas was by far the occasion most consumers intended to spend the most on. What Americans give, want, and buy for themselves. Gift cards and clothing are the most popular planned holiday purchases, followed by toys, books, and electronics. These choices align closely with what recipients say they actually want: money topped U.S. consumers' wish lists in 2025, followed closely by gift cards and apparel, suggesting that many Americans prize the freedom to choose for themselves above all else. That desire extended even to self-gifting, with close to one in five consumers who planned to buy themselves a present intending to spend 500 U.S. dollars or more on that personal treat. Beyond conventional products, second-hand gifting has grown meaningfully, with the share of consumers willing to give pre-owned items as holiday gifts having nearly doubled between 2022 and 2025. Finding the right gift is harder than it looks. Finding a suitable present remains a genuine challenge for many shoppers, and most turned to their personal networks for ideas first. Among consumers who sought gift inspiration on social media, friends and family ranked as the most trusted source, well ahead of user comments and influencer recommendations. Even so, not every gift lands: more than one in three consumers returned or planned to return holiday gifts they received in 2025. For those pulling back on spending, inflation was the dominant concern, with a clear majority of budget-conscious shoppers citing higher product prices as their main reason for cutting back per recipient. Together, the challenge of choosing well and the pressure of rising costs continue to shape how Americans approach the tradition of giving.

Europe's electricity generation is becoming increasingly clean, with countries such as Greece generating more from renewables than from fossil fuels for the first time in recent years. In 2024, Europe ranked third among the largest global electricity consumers behind Asia and North America, with approximately 3,300 terawatt-hours consumed. While total electricity demand in European countries is mostly proportional to population size, Nordic countries are the most intense consumers in the region, with Iceland, Norway, and Finland recording the highest electricity consumption per capita. A growing appetite for renewables. In one way or another, Europe has always been at the forefront of the clean energy transition. With close to 778 gigawatts of renewable electricity generation capacity recorded in the EU in 2025, the bloc continued to expand its clean power infrastructure. Renewable sources accounted for more of the European Union's electricity generation than fossil fuels, while nuclear power remained the largest single source of electricity generation in the region, with roughly 652 terawatt-hours produced that year. A patchwork of national power mixes. Nevertheless, the electricity generation mix varies widely across the continent. In Germany, one of the largest electricity producers in Europe, wind power accounted for roughly 28 percent of the country's gross electricity generation in 2024, followed by brown coal as the second leading source. Meanwhile, in France, nuclear accounted for over 67 percent of the electricity output in 2024. Sweden, Finland, France, Luxembourg, and Denmark were the EU countries with the largest share of clean electricity generated that year. European utilities at the global helm. Europe is home to some of the largest revenue-generating electric utilities worldwide. In 2026, Italian utility Enel led the global ranking by sales, followed by Germany's E.ON. Iberdrola, based in Spain, was also one of the most valuable electric utilities globally by market capitalization. These three utilities are among the new energy titans designated as green supermajors, which have seen their market value soar in recent years, challenging the historic dominance of big oil companies.

The fitness industry in Europe is thriving, driven by growing demand for health, wellness, and innovative workout experiences. In 2025, the revenue of the health and fitness market in Europe hit 39.1 billion euros. This not only showed a complete recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic, but it also showed a 10 billion euros increase when compared to 2019. When it came to the leading fitness club operators in Europe in recent data, Basic-Fit topped the list, reporting revenue of over one billion euros. Rounding out the top three were two British brands: David Lloyd Leisure and PureGym.  Industry overview. Looking at the largest fitness markets in Europe, the United Kingdom marginally outperformed Germany in 2023, with the two countries generating 5.5 and 5.4 billion euros in revenue, respectively, that year. In both countries, it was also clear that consumers were willing to spend money to help them on their fitness journeys. Alongside gym memberships, some of the most popular fitness and health service purchases in the UK in 2025 included fitness apps, wellness services, and personal trainers. The outlook was similar when looking at the fitness and health service purchases in Germany, although German consumers were less likely to spend money on personal trainers than their British counterparts. To cope with the demand, the supply of fitness facilities has had to keep up. As a result, the number of gyms and health clubs in Europe has increased by almost 20,000 since 2009.  Gym membership bigger than ever. Gym and health club memberships in Europe, which declined by nearly 15 percent between 2019 and 2020 due to the global health crisis, increased by 12 percent in 2022 over the previous year, showing signs of recovery after COVID-19-related safety measures led to the closure of many fitness establishments. Indeed, by 2025, gym memberships had even exceeded pre-pandemic levels, with a reported 75.5 million members at gyms and health clubs across Europe in that year. One of the key selling points of going to the gym is the extra motivation and fun provided through group fitness classes. In England alone, the number of people participating in fitness classes in 2025 exceeded 7.2 million. However, the pandemic trend of home workouts still endured, as highlighted by a survey in 2024, which revealed that over half of European fitness fans worked out at home. Digital fitness applications. Health and fitness apps provide people with a digital tool to access a variety of exercises, track progress with their workouts, and measure their personal health over time. In 2024, sports apps and health & fitness apps had among the highest average revenue per download from all mobile apps in Europe. Digital fitness even extends beyond mobile applications, with eHealth devices being another product that has benefitted from the growth of the fitness industry. According to a Statista Consumer Insights survey at the end of 2025, Apple produced the most used eHealth trackers or smartwatches in the United Kingdom, while Xiomi/Mi slightly outpaced Apple in Spain. As more and more fitness fans turn to technology to help them achieve their goals, the number of fitness tracking wristwear users worldwide was also forecast to double between 2025 and 2031. As the industry evolves, Europe's fitness landscape will continue to shape the future of health and wellness, offering new opportunities for growth and new and exciting ways for consumers to hit their fitness goals. One thing is clear: the fitness industry in Europe is not breaking a sweat when it comes to continual growth.

From exercising at home to taking part in group classes at the gym, the fitness industry in the United Kingdom is, much like the fitness fanatics themselves, going from strength to strength. Following the disastrous impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which forced the closure of many gyms across the country, the industry has shown significant signs of recovery. This can be seen in the total number of gyms and fitness centers within the UK, which reached an all-time high in 2025. The number of members at gyms and fitness clubs in the country saw a similar increase, exceeding eleven million for the first time in 2025.  Employment in the fitness industry. In 2026, there were roughly 200,000 people in the United Kingdom with an occupation in the sports and fitness sector, of which an estimated 62,400 were fitness and wellness instructors. The personal training industry has experienced a negative trend in the last couple of years; this may be due to the increasing number of fitness apps and the use of AI as personal trainers. Furthermore, the market size of the personal training industry has not been shrinking; in fact, the market size exceeded the 850 million British pounds in 2025, exhibiting steady growth on the figure from 2023.  The UK works up a sweat. Over the last three years, the number of people participating in fitness classes in England remained consistently over six million and, in fact, exceeded 7.2 million up until November 2025. Latest estimates also suggested that millions more were taking part in generic fitness training outside a classroom environment. In Scotland, meanwhile, an estimated 68 percent of men and 79 percent of women aged between 16 and 24 were meeting the guidelines for moderate or vigorous physical activity. However, for those aged 75 years and older, this figure fell to 45 percent for men and just 30 percent for women. The growing popularity of fitness apps. Many tech-savvy fitness enthusiasts have turned to apps and online services to keep them in shape. Some of the most popular fitness and health service online purchases in the UK were in the categories of fitness, yoga, and training, as well as health tracking. As a result of this crossover between fitness and digital, the revenue of the digital fitness and well-being apps segment of the digital health market was estimated to reach well over one billion U.S. dollars by 2031. The United Kingdom also seems to have taken to the wearables craze, with 46 percent of respondents in a 2026 Statista survey stating that they personally used wearable devices, such as smartwatches or health and fitness trackers. The UK fitness industry has bounced back after the pandemic with new ways to keep people active, from online workouts to innovative gym facilities. With more focus on technology and making fitness easier for everyone, staying active will continue to become more accessible and enjoyable in the future.

The pulp and paper industry is one of the largest in the world, and the United States plays a major role in it. In 2024, the U.S. was the  largest producer of pulp for paper and the second-largest producer of paper and paperboard worldwide, after China, which surpassed the U.S. in the early 2000s. The U.S. paper production is larger than its consumption, and the North American country is a net exporter of paper and paperboard. Paper production in the United States keeps shrinking. The production of pulp for paper in the U.S. has fallen by roughly 37 percent since the beginning of the century, to about 36 million metric tons in 2024. The amount of pulp for paper produced in the U.S. has been declining since the early 1990s, when production reached a high of almost 65 million metric tons. This decline has coincided with the decrease in paper and paperboard production, which fell by roughly 30 percent between 2000 and 2024. As the digital transformation has increasingly impacted numerous areas of human activity, the consumption of paper in the U.S. has also been on the decline over the past decades. What is the most produced paper product in the United States? The U.S. paper industry produces a wide range of paper and paperboard grades, but packaging types are the most produced, by weight. In 2024, case materials accounted for more than half of U.S. paper and paperboard production. Case materials, or containerboard, are a type of paperboard used in corrugated board production and have experienced growing demand in recent years from the e-commerce sector. In contrast, the production of graphic papers, such as newsprint, printing, and writing papers, has plummeted almost 80 percent since 2000 due to increased digitalization. Leading paper companies in the United States. The U.S. is home to some of the largest paper companies in the world, such as Kimberly-Clark and International Paper. Kimberly-Clark, with a revenue of over 20 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, is one of the major personal care paper products' producers worldwide, owning some well-known brands such as Kleenex and Scottex. International Paper is a leading paper packaging producer and reported revenue of 18.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. That year, it accounted for almost 30 percent of the North American containerboard market. Other major companies in the U.S. paper industry include Graphic Packaging International, Packaging Corporation of America, and Domtar. Despite still being a major player in the global paper market, the size and the revenue of the U.S. paper mill industry are declining, while the country is losing ground to China.

Consumers’ interest in cleaning supplies has kept on growing in the last few years. As awareness on the importance of good hygiene practices increases, so does the revenue of the global home and laundry care market, which was estimated to add up to nearly 202 billion U.S. dollars in 2025 and to grow to over 243 billion U.S. dollars by 2031. The United States is the leading region in the market, having recorded over 34 billion U.S. dollars in revenues as of 2025, followed by China and India.  Market segmentation. This market comprises several segments and thus products destined for different purposes. The laundry care category is by far the most profitable, and if in 2025 it accounted for more than 109 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, this figure was projected to reach over 132 billion in 2031. The household cleaners segment is also a popular one, with nearly 40 billion U.S. dollars in revenues. Other categories include dishwashing products and polishes, room scents, and insecticides. Key industry players. Many company names come to mind when thinking about this market, and some of them have become industry staples. Procter & Gamble is one of the industry leaders, with around 42 billion U.S. dollars in sales recorded in the United States in its fiscal year 2026. Some of its competitors include Unilever, and the Germany-based Henkel, both very popular also in the personal care market. Among the most popular global home care brands are OMO, Sunlight, Downy, Tide, and many others. In the United States, Dawn dominates the rankings among female shoppers, and Clorox among male shoppers.  Competition in this market is quite fierce, as many companies keep on investing in research to provide innovative products and keep up with trends, all while consumers’ needs change. Sustainability, but also quality and affordability, are currently some of the most sought-after attributes.

Recent years have seen some major demographic milestones: the world’s population surpassed eight billion in 2023; India overtook China as the most populous country in 2022; while China and Europe's populations went into decline in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Demographic change has some of the most important, yet overlooked, impacts on modern societies: regional trends can determine the success of a business launch or election campaign, while global trends affect challenges like climate change, migration crises, or resource scarcity. Population aging and decline are now major issues in some parts of the globe, but how can we predict how these trends will develop in the coming years? And how can societies use this information to mitigate these challenges? The demographic transition model. As societies industrialize, trends in fertility and mortality change drastically, causing a demographic transition. In oversimplified terms, this is where societies go from having high birth and death rates to having low birth and death rates, and the interim period sees a population boom. Industrialization then brings improvements in food security, clean water, and medicine, among others, leading to a large drop in mortality, especially among children. In pre-industrial times, roughly a quarter of children did not make it to their first birthday, and half died before reaching adulthood; in many countries today, well over 99 percent of children survive childhood. As more children survive, populations grow exponentially; therefore, population booms are rarely due to increased fertility rates but rather because people live longer. In response to this falling mortality, fertility rates then go into decline as families no longer need to compensate for child mortality, while providing for larger families can strain household resources. Eventually, birth and death rates plateau at a similar level, and natural population growth is minimal. The rippling effect of demographic progress. Demographic progress is not limited to trends affecting children; improvements that increase childhood survival rates also increase life expectancy among adults and cause socioeconomic advances on a massive scale. Fewer children means women and girls’ lives are less restricted by domestic responsibilities, increasing opportunities for education, employment, and recreation. Through contraception, lower child marriage rates, and lifestyle choices, women also tend to have children later in life. Female empowerment is often met with resistance, and the fight for gender equality continues even in societies considered most advanced; but, overall, there is a definitive correlation between socioeconomic progress and female empowerment that is rooted in demographic development. A future in decline? Demographers originally believed transitions ended with balanced birth and death rates; however, below replacement-level fertility rates (around 2.1 children per woman) are now accepted as the norm in most developed countries, and the global population is set to go into decline in the 2080s. Countries such as Germany and Italy have been experiencing natural population decline for decades and have only sustained their population via immigration, whereas regions such as Eastern Europe have seen their populations drop by tens of millions through low fertility and high emigration rates. In contrast, Africa’s population is set to grow exponentially into the 2100s, as these transitions began at much later times than those of other continents, yet these countries' progress is delayed by challenges such as economic and political instability, climate change, and resource scarcities on a scale much greater than those faced by Western countries. Aging populations place great strain on economies, as resources must be redistributed due to fewer taxpaying workers and greater eldercare demands. Additionally, these challenges compound fertility crises, as families with eldercare responsibilities may not have the capacity to have children; this is evident in China, where those born during the “one-child policy” era are often solely responsible for their parents’ care. Governments around the world have introduced family-friendly incentives to try and reverse these trends, but with no notable successes. It remains to be seen whether they will eventually lead to a cultural shift regarding fertility, or how much governments will turn to automation or migration in an attempt to solve economic decline.

As a traditionally tea-drinking country, China has lagged behind Western countries and many neighboring regions in Asia in terms of coffee consumption. However, with rising popularity of coffee among its younger generations, the country has been catching up rapidly: by 2025, average annual coffee consumption per capita had climbed to nearly 29 cups, around 70 percent higher than just two years earlier. Today, many experts view China as one of the most promising coffee markets, with the country's coffee segment revenue projected at over 15 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Coffee cultivation and trade in China. China is a relatively young country in terms of coffee cultivation. In the 19th century, French missionaries introduced coffee to Yunnan province in South China, which has since grown into the country's dominant coffee-growing region, supplying the vast majority of domestic output. While its neighbor Vietnam ranks among the largest coffee producers worldwide, China's coffee production volume stayed under two million 60-kilogram bags in the 2024/25 crop year, a small fraction of global output. As a result, the growing demand for coffee in the country remains heavily reliant on imports. In 2025, Brazil was again China's largest coffee import partner by value, supplying more than 500 million U.S. dollars worth of coffee, followed closely by Ethiopia, then Colombia and Vietnam. During the crop year ending in September 2025, China's green coffee bean imports reached more than three million bags, far above the volumes recorded a decade ago. China's coffee consumption. For decades, instant coffee owed its dominance in the Chinese coffee market to its low price and convenience. That balance has since shifted dramatically, as more and more consumers expand their knowledge, taste, and appreciation of a superior quality product: retail sales of fresh ground coffee are estimated to exceed 125 billion yuan in 2025, more than seven times the size of retail sales of instant coffee, which stood at just over 17 billion yuan that same year. The number of cafés in China has been increasing at a blistering pace, with independent shops operating alongside a fast-growing wave of chain openings. There has been an increase in the number of coffee chains entering China in the past few years, which are expected to expand their market share further. By far, Luckin Coffee remains the largest fresh-ground coffee seller in China, now running more than 36,000 stores across the country. The boom of new coffee shops and the popularity of coffee delivery apps make coffee not only extremely accessible in urban China but also fashionable, especially among young professionals. Being traditionally a tea-drinking society, Chinese people are opening up to international influences, foreign brands, and new experiences, transforming the coffee market into a highly promising opportunity.

Fossil fuels still power America, as petroleum and natural gas remain by far the country's largest sources of energy. In 2024, some 80 percent of the primary energy consumed in the U.S. was from fossil fuels, while renewables covered less than 10 percent of the country's primary energy mix. The amount of primary energy consumed from petroleum alone was over four times larger than that of renewable energy sources. Nuclear energy and electricity imports accounted for the remaining part of the energy consumed in the country. How is energy consumption changing in the United States? As emerging countries continue to grow rapidly, the world's total energy demand continues to rise. In contrast, developed countries such as the U.S. have seen a stabilization of consumption due in part to better efficiency standards. In fact, the total energy supply in the United States has remained mostly unchanged since the late 1990s, which is in part a result of a leveling of primary energy consumption by energy-intensive sectors. However, the increasing deployment of data centers, artificial intelligence technology, and the electrification of the economy anticipate an increase in electricity consumption in the coming years. In terms of change in energy supply sources, U.S. energy consumption from fossil fuels has shown an overall decreasing trend, having declined by approximately eight percent since the early 2000s. Among fossil fuels, coal consumption has experienced the largest decrease over the past two decades. By comparison, the use of natural gas has grown by 40 percent between 2000 and 2024. Renewable energy consumption in the United States. Renewable energy's share of the country's total energy consumption has doubled since the turn of the century, though it still accounted for a small share of U.S. energy use in 2024. The transportation sector, electricity generation, and commercial activities have experienced the largest increase in renewable energy consumption since the early 2000s, despite this being a minimal part of the sectors' energy use. For instance, renewables still make up only a small portion of the transportation sector's total energy use. According to a recent forecast, renewable energy consumption in the U.S. is forecast to reach close to 14 quadrillion British thermal units by 2050, around 65 percent more than the amount covered by wind, solar, hydro, biomass, and biofuels in the country in 2025. However, since 2025, U.S. energy policy has prioritized the expansion of fossil fuel production over renewable energy sources, which will likely result in a slowdown of the latter sector's growth.

Digital retail media advertising in the United States - statistics & facts. Digital retail media refers to advertising featured on a retail website, app, or marketplace. This type of promotion has become an essential tool for brands amid the rapid rise of e-commerce. The United States is home to many of the world's most valuable retailers, such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target, which were quick to monetize their platforms. In 2026, digital retail media advertising spending in the U.S. is forecast to reach 69.3 billion U.S. dollars, with  continued growth through the end of the decade expected to push spending toward nearly 98 billion dollars by 2029. Retailers hear the sweet sound of new money. Amazon is not only the largest online retailer in the United States but also dominates its retail media landscape. In 2025, it commanded over three-quarters of U.S. digital retail media ad spending, far ahead of competitors. However, other players such as Walmart, Instacart, and Uber are building their own ad platforms to compete for every retail media dollar. Providing such ad services is especially attractive in uncertain economic times, creating an additional revenue stream. On top, retailers learn more about their customers through this first-party data, helping advertisers run campaigns more effectively. Consumers finally see ads worth their while. Consumer data is the key to successful advertising on online retail platforms. Well-targeted ads give consumers offers they are more likely to find relevant. This may be why online shoppers generally do not oppose such ads. Most shoppers already treat retailer sites as their default shopping destination, with close to half of U.S. and U.K. consumers saying they browse and purchase directly on a retailer's website or app, more than through any other channel. Meanwhile, TV and social media, not retail platforms, top the list of the most disruptive advertising channels named by U.S. consumers. This implies that retail media ads are potentially a helpful part of shopping rather than an annoyance. Marketers put generative AI to the test. As retail media matures, marketers increasingly use generative AI to run their programs more efficiently: nearly two-thirds of U.S. retail media marketers have adopted GenAI tools. The clearest payoff is speed: most users name efficiency gains as GenAI's biggest benefit, followed by more accurate targeting. Adoption still faces friction, as many marketers cite a lack of technical expertise as their biggest hurdle. Taken together, these trends show retail media has moved from a promising experiment to a core pillar of U.S. digital advertising, with AI poised to shape its next phase. As Amazon and its rivals keep investing in new formats and targeting tools, marketers who adapt fastest stand to capture the largest share of this growing market.

Femtech is expanding faster than the digital health market around it. Worldwide, the sector was worth almost 52 billion U.S. dollars at the start of the forecast period and is projected to exceed 117 billion U.S. dollars by 2029. Venture formation has outpaced digital health overall over the past decade, while the number of partnerships is now over 15 times higher than a decade earlier. This reflects a shift from isolated startups toward an ecosystem in which collaboration has become a core route to scale. Gynecology and oncology each account for a sizeable share of ventures, which suggests the category extends well beyond reproductive wellness. Capital narrows and concentrates. Capital has not kept pace with this expansion. Femtech's share of digital health funding fell from around 15 percent at the start of the period shown to below eight percent, indicating that growth in ventures and partnerships is not matched by proportional investment. Within femtech, oncology-focused ventures received 10 billion U.S. dollars cumulatively, more than double the amount for gynecology. Part of this reflects oncology's sizeable venture base, yet funding per venture appears markedly higher. The pattern increases reliance on a narrow set of therapeutic areas and on medical diagnostics, which draw the largest share of cluster funding.  Consumer reach meets unresolved care gaps. User demand is visible but concentrated. The leading period tracker, Flo, generates over 130 million U.S. dollars annually in in-app revenue, roughly ten times the 13 million of Natural Cycles, the next-ranked app. Tracking is also becoming part of everyday behavior, as U.S. use of period and fertility tracking technology rose after the Dobbs ruling. This reliance on a few consumer platforms contrasts with persistent gaps in clinical care. In the UK, the average wait for an endometriosis diagnosis  has lengthened to almost 9.5 years, and most U.S. women surveyed reported menopause symptoms affecting at least one aspect of work life. This suggests that digital engagement is growing faster than its translation into diagnosis and treatment, leaving consumer apps and funded clinical solutions serving different parts of need. Between expansion and evidence. The tension between broad expansion and tighter capital reflects a wider pattern in women's health, where only a small fraction of private healthcare investment is directed at the field, with the large majority concentrated in women's cancers, reproductive health and maternal health. Conditions such as endometriosis and menopause receive far less, which is consistent with persistent diagnosis and care gaps even as consumer uptake grows. Signs of rebalancing are emerging. Regulatory change around menopausal hormone therapy, together with investor interest in menopause care, remote maternal and mental health platforms and wearables for conditions such as PCOS, points to a gradual move from consumer tracking toward clinically relevant products. Much of the investment in women's-health companies remains early-stage, and calls for stronger evidence and transparency suggest larger capital flows may depend on proof of clinical value. Privacy is a further open variable, as reproductive data collected by consumer apps often falls outside federal health privacy protections in the U.S. Whether engagement converts into broader diagnosis and care remains uncertain.

Despite increasing political attention paid to the topic, gender and racial wage disparities in the Untied States persist. While progress has been made towards closing the gender pay gap, male annual earnings continue to outpace those of female workers by thousands of dollars. Additionally, there are significant discrepancies between different racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., with Asian American households earning nearly twice as much annually when compared with Black American households. Gender. There is no state in the United States where women earn more than men. Vermont has the smallest gender pay gap, while Utah has the largest. Additionally, there are almost no occupations in which women out-earn men, even in occupations that traditionally employ more women. For example, male elementary and middle school teachers earned over 150 U.S. dollars per week more than their female counterparts in 2021. A similar trend can be seen for registered nurses and HR professionals. Moreover, while women are hired as new associates at law firms in equal numbers to men, just over a quarter of equity partners were women in 2023. And while furthering one's education may be one answer to increasing overall earnings, the disparity between men and women's wages actually increases with level of education. For example, women with a professional or doctorate degree can expect to make less than a man with a master's degree. The gender pay gap is further exacerbated by race. When looking at average weekly earnings across all racial groups, women fare worse. Not only do they under-earn compared to men within the same ethnic and racial groups as them, but female workers from all background also have lower average weekly earnings than a white man. The disparity is seen most acutely amongst Hispanic or Latino women who earn an average of 800 U.S. dollars per week compared to the 1,138 U.S. dollars earned by white male workers. Race. While the gender pay gap is persistent and significant, people of all genders are subject to disparities in pay. Another ongoing discussion in the United States is that of the racial wage gap, given the disparities in median household income across racial and ethnic groups. Black American households had a median income of 56,490 U.S. dollars in 2023, significantly lower than the median income of white households which stood at 89,050 U.S. dollars in the same year. All ethnic minority individuals in the United States also face higher rates of unemployment than white people. This is particularly prevalent amongst Black and African American individuals who had an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent in 2023. This has the knock-on effect of hindering Black and other ethnic minority households in establishing other social protections such as retirement funds and access to health insurance.

With a population of more than 330 million people, the United States is the third most populous country in the world. The U.S. is considered a demographically advanced society, with low fertility and mortality rates, although its birth rate is slightly higher than its death rate, which maintains natural population growth. Despite being the wealthiest country in the world, life expectancy from birth is around 77 years in the United States, which puts it outside of the top 50 countries - this has even dropped in some recent years, and the decline has been attributed to high rates of obesity, barriers to healthcare access, and unhealthy lifestyle choices. High rates of drug use (illegal and prescription ) and gun violence are also considered major obstacles to progress. Nonetheless, the United States’ population is expected to continue growing naturally throughout the remainder of the century, in contrast to many other more developed countries, and is predicted to be over 430 million by 2100. Multiculturalism. The U.S. population also grows through migration - in absolute numbers, the U.S. has the largest foreign-born population in the world and has had the highest net immigration virtually every year since international records are available. The population of the U.S. is considered one of the most multicultural in the world, and is often referred to as a melting pot or salad bowl society because of this diversity. Differences in demographics and living standards do exist across various ethnic groups, in areas such as fertility rates, life expectancy, and education, although many of these issues also correlate with income and region. Since the mid-1900s, Latin America (especially Mexico) has been the most common point of origin for migrants to the U.S., and Hispanics or Latinos are now the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Many of the fastest growing cities and metropolitan areas are located along the Mexican border, not only due to migration, but also due to higher fertility rates among Hispanic women. Demographic history. Before Columbus’ arrival in the Americas, the population of mainland North America was estimated to have been approximately 4.4 million people. As European contact increased, especially in the 1600s, the native population went into decline; this was primarily due to the introduction of old world diseases, as well as violence and forced displacement. Therefore, in the 17th and 18th centuries, population growth in the United States was largely driven by European settlement and the importation of enslaved Africans. The transatlantic slave trade was then abolished in 1808, and this coincided with a sharp uptick in migration from Europe. The 19th century also saw the onset of the demographic transition in the U.S. – the share of children who died before their fifth birthday fell from over 46 percent in 1800 to less than one percent in the year 2000, and the average woman went from having roughly seven children in 1800 to just two by the 1940s. Urbanization and industrialization also increased throughout these centuries; at first it was concentrated in the Northeast, before spreading westward during the 20th century, following the country’s territorial expansion. There were some major spikes in mortality throughout U.S. history; the deadliest conflict was the American Civil War, which claimed over 620,000 lives; and waves of pandemics such as cholera, influenza, and yellow fever also had death tolls in the tens of thousands. However, population growth was fairly rapid, and largely coincided with significant improvements in living standards and income for the majority of American citizens. Regional differences. California is the country’s most populous state, while New York City is the country’s most populous metropolitan area. Excluding the District of Columbia, which is 100 percent urbanized, the most densely populated state is New Jersey, while Alaska is the most sparsely populated. In terms of the country’s four broader regions, the South is the most populous today, and is home to almost 40 percent of the U.S. population. Maine is the oldest state in the U.S., with a median age of 45 years, while Utah is the youngest at 31 years.

Construction tech encompasses a diverse range of tools and software where usage has been on the rise. This does not just include Building Information Modelling (BIM), digital twins, data analysis, project management tools, and other software; but also robotics, 3D printing, drones, and artificial intelligence (AI). However, the adoption levels of each of these technologies have varied significantly. The global construction and design software industry generated over 11 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2025, with the Americas accounting for the largest share. From niche toolkits to billion-dollar platforms. Architects, civil engineers, and construction professionals have several types of software at their disposal to facilitate their work. Autodesk was one of the largest players in that market, with the revenue generated by its architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) products amounting to roughly 3.6 billion U.S. dollars in the financial year ended in January 2026. Autodesk develops BIM and computer-aided design (CAD) software, as well as product lifecycle management (PLM) tools like construction cloud, as well as serving other industries. This has also been true for other large software companies. The revenue of Dassault Systèmes, for example, was even higher than that of Autodesk, amounting to 6.21 billion euros in 2024. It has not been made clear by Dassault as to what share of that revenue came from the construction sector. Life sciences and healthcare, manufacturing, and the other industries that the company develops software for have also contributed to the combined figure. Smaller construction software companies such as the German Nemetschek with a revenue of nearly 1.2 billion euros in 2025 have focused on providing software solutions for the AEC and operations sectors with a more precise approach to its operations. AI's slow but accelerating footprint in construction. The current AI boom is also expected to affect the construction industry. In the first half of 2026, for example, over 10 percent of U.S. construction companies were using AI, with that share having grown rapidly from under two percent in late 2023. Across the Atlantic, roughly 11 percent of construction companies in the European Union were using AI in 2025, with those figures amounting to 24 percent in Finland, roughly 24 percent in Luxembourg and Denmark, and over 20 percent in the Netherlands and Belgium. Text mining was the most common usage of AI by construction companies in the EU in 2025, but was still relatively uncommon at around six percent of companies. Within such a wide-ranging topic as construction tech, there are some tools where usage is fairly widespread in the industry, while others are nascent technologies where the impact is still unclear. Nevertheless, venture capital deal counts in construction tech hit a record 325 in 2024, signaling continued investor confidence in the sector's digital future.

In 2025, worldwide commercial vehicle production grew to around 27.9 million units from 24.8 million units recorded in 2024. It was a high point in the decade and signified a strong recovery from 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused a reduction in production of more than three million vehicles. Commercial vehicles are comprised of all motor vehicles intended for the commercial transport of goods and passengers, with light commercial vehicles often referring to vehicles under 3.5 tons. With around 13.2 million vehicles produced, North America remained the leading region in commercial vehicle production in 2025. Estimates placed Asia and Oceania as the top manufacturer of heavy trucks in that year, with around 3.0 million units produced, based on the most recent data available.  U.S. leads commercial vehicle sales, Europe leads truck and bus revenues. The U.S. is one of the leading countries in the commercial vehicles market due to its heavy reliance on road freight transport. In 2024, the number of sales for commercial vehicles in the U.S. stood at 13.36 million units, while 3.87 million units sold in China. However, the regional demand is much more widespread than the two national markets indicate, with it extending well beyond either country. That year,  commercial vehicle sales across the Asia/Oceania/Middle East region were estimated at 7.36 million, whereas in Europe the figure stood at 3.06 million. However, European companies beat out U.S.-American manufacturers in terms of global sales. In the 2024 fiscal year, the German truck and bus maker Daimler Truck dominated the market, recording some 56.3 billion U.S. dollars in revenue for the sale of its heavy trucks and buses. Paccar, headquartered in Washington State, reported net sales of around 33.66 billion U.S. dollars. As of 2024, Daimler Truck was not only the global commercial vehicle leader, but its Freightliner brand held some 36 percent of the U.S. Class 8 truck market, above Paccar's Peterbilt and Kenworth brands which together represented around 30.9 percent of the market. A long road ahead for electric commercial vehicles. With increased concern about CO2 emissions related to transportation, alternative fuels are gaining importance in the commercial sector. Electrification is changing that landscape, but its progress depends on the type of vehicle and location. Such initiatives are currently being taken up enthusiastically by Chinese manufacturers. One company investing in new energy technology is SAIC Motor, whose new energy vehicle sales stood at over one million passenger car units in 2024, along with 33,717 new energy commercial vehicles. When looking at the European market for zero-emission buses, Mercedes and Solaris took the lead in terms of supplier share, with 16.22 percent and 12.3 percent, respectively. Looking ahead, the growth of electric commercial vehicles is likely to have a significant influence on the state of the market moving forward.

Japan remains one of the world's largest pharmaceutical markets, yet its relative global position has been steadily contracting. Japan's share of global pharmaceutical revenue has declined while North America's has grown, highlighting a structural shift in where the industry's value is being created. Domestically, demand continues to expand:  the prescription drug market reached 11.5 trillion Japanese yen (approximately 76 billion U.S. dollars) in 2024, its highest value on record, and total pharmaceutical production value exceeded 10.25 trillion yen (~68 bn USD). Yet this trajectory, driven by one of the world's oldest populations, does not translate into a growing share of the global innovation economy, thus pointing to a gap between Japan's healthcare needs and its influence on the industry's international development. Oncology concentration and risk. The domestic competitive landscape is defined by a small group of large players and a pronounced therapeutic focus. Takeda Pharmaceutical led prescription drug sales in 2024 at approximately 692 billion yen (~4.6 bn USD), followed closely by Daiichi Sankyo at around 661 billion yen (~4.4 bn USD). Oncology drives the top of the market: Keytruda ranked first with approximately 185 billion yen (~1.2 bn USD) in annual sales, and oncology therapies occupy multiple top-ten positions. At the production level, antineoplastics represented 13.4 percent of total drug production value in 2023, the single largest therapeutic category, nearly three percentage points ahead of central nervous system agents. While this concentration is coherent given Japan's aging demographics, it increases the market's sensitivity to pricing decisions and patent cycles within a single domain, limiting the diversification that would otherwise cushion revenue volatility.  R&D scale up, intensity down. Japan's pharmaceutical sector maintains a substantial R&D base, with total industry expenditure reaching approximately 1.54 trillion yen (~11 bn USD) in fiscal year 2023, of which Takeda alone accounted for around 730 billion yen (~5.2 bn USD), roughly twice that of the next largest spender, Daiichi Sankyo. Yet the ratio of R&D spending to sales stood at 10.26 percent in fiscal 2023, down from nearly 12 percent in recent prior years, indicating that revenue growth has outpaced reinvestment. Generics, meanwhile, reached 85 percent of prescription drug volume in 2024, compressing the branded revenue base from which innovation is typically funded. Together, these dynamics point to a growing tension between the sector's absolute R&D scale and its reinvestment capacity. This tension could weigh on pipeline depth over time. Strategic outlook. A central challenge for Japan's pharmaceutical market concerns its position in the global innovation cycle. The country has historically experienced delayed access to novel therapies relative to the U.S. and leading European markets, with some manufacturers increasingly opting to forgo Japan launches entirely, a phenomenon referred to as "drug loss." This dynamic, if it persists, risks compounding the market's declining share of global pharmaceutical value, not through lack of demand, but through a reduced capacity to attract and retain first-mover innovation. Whether Japan can establish itself as an early-access market for the first time while managing the fiscal pressures of i ts healthcare system represents one of the more consequential open questions for the industry's trajectory in the region. Added to the innovation challenge is a changing policy backdrop that could make commercial performance less predictable. Authorities plan to revise the National Health Insurance (NHI) pricing system more often and to widen the circumstances that trigger price cuts. Together, these changes increase the risk that official reimbursement levels will move more frequently and by larger amounts. The practical effect could be that higher patient volumes do not produce proportionate revenue growth: sales volumes may rise while average prices and margins fall, squeezing manufacturers' returns even as demand grows.

The electronics manufacturing industry is among the most significant contributors to the manufacturing output in the Philippines. With a focus on the sub-assembly of various electronic components, the sector accounts for the largest share of commodity exports from the Philippines, equivalent to about 60 percent. While it may not be the leading industry when it comes to GDP contribution, primarily due to production costs, electrical equipment manufacturing still generated over 50 billion Philippine pesos in gross value added in 2022. Electronics industry landscape. The electronics industry in the Philippines comprises semiconductor manufacturing services (SMS), 73 percent of the market, and electronics manufacturing services (EMS). The industry is focused primarily on the assembly, testing, packaging, and distribution of various electronic goods. In earlier years, it was dominated by international manufacturers that had moved their operations to the Philippines because of cheaper labor and lower production costs. Today, nearly 600 establishments in the sector are found within the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) locations. The major products within the electronics manufacturing industry are semiconductors and electronic data processing products such as hard disk drives. In 2022, semiconductors accounted for the highest share of the total electronic products exported from the Philippines. They were primarily exported to China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Also known as integrated circuits and microchips, semiconductors are used in many electrical appliances and consumer electronics such as smartphones and televisions. To produce semiconductors, the Philippines also imports electronic goods such as wafers from China, Korea, and Taiwan, among others. In addition, the sector also produces final products and product-specific parts in the consumer electronics, medical devices, office equipment, and automotive electronics sectors. Industry challenges and tax incentives for investors. Surging demand for electronic devices in recent years and growing interest in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence have contributed to the rapid growth of the electronics industry. However, the uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a slowdown in equipment production, translating to reduced output for semiconductors. To help the industry recover and attract more foreign investments, the government passed the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (also known as CREATE Law) in March 2021, which provides better tax incentives to investors. In 2021, the Philippines received about 10.52 billion U.S. dollars of foreign direct investments. The value of approved investments in the manufacturing industry was twice as much as in the current year. The sector is looking to increase foreign investments further and is venturing into manufacturing medical devices and automotive electronics.

eSports, which stands for electronic sports, refers to video game tournaments that are played by amateur or professional gamers at regional or international level. Competitions can be played by individual gamers or as teams, and events are often streamed live over the internet, attracting a large number of viewers. In recent years, the eSports market in Europe has grown rapidly and this growth is forecast to continue. Many different types of video games are played in eSports tournaments. Some of the most popular games include League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle arena game, and Call of Duty: Warzone, a multiplayer battle royale game. Many video game developers are now designing games with eSports in mind, incorporating tournament capabilities in their games or providing funding for gaming events. Most popular countries for eSports in Europe. Professional gamers who play eSports can win large sums of money at competitions, and while eSports are not as popular in Europe as they are in North America and China, European eSports players earned a fair amount of winnings in 2022. Russia was the European country with the highest amount of eSports prize money won that year, with a total of nearly 9.5 million U.S. dollars in winnings. However, while Russia brought in the most money in tournament winnings, Poland and Spain were the European countries with the highest share of eSports viewers in 2022. eSports fans spend big on the hobby. In addition to watching livestreams of tournaments online, eSports fans can purchase merchandise related to their favorite games, professional gamers, and teams. This includes not only physical merchandise, but also digital content such as skins, banners, and content passes. Tickets to events and related purchases were the most popular eSports products purchased by European fans in 2022. Hardcore viewers of eSports in Europe, classified as those who spent more than 10 hours per week consuming content, spent an average of 29 euros per month on their hobby. Leading eSports players and teams. The top eSports players in Europe earn hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars each year through their exploits. The leading eSports player in the United Kingdom in 2022 was Harry Pearson, also known by his gamertag Veno, who earned almost 345 thousand U.S. dollars competing in Fortnite tournaments. Tundra Esports, a professional eSports organization based in London, was the leading eSports team worldwide in 2022 based on combined earnings. Competing primarily in Dota 2 competitions, the team won The International in 2022 without losing a single series.

The non-alcoholic beverages industry is of great importance worldwide and this is reflected in the industry's revenue. Sales in the global market are expected to be almost two trillion U.S. dollars by 2030. A subcategory of beverages sold are energy drinks. Recently, interest among younger consumers in particular has increased significantly, so that the energy drinks market worldwide generated revenues of around 214 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Here too, the forecast shows steady growth.  Red Bull: leading player. Red Bull GmbH was founded in 1984 and is currently headquartered in Austria. The beverage company operates in approximately 170 countries worldwide and achieved its highest global revenue in 2025. It is best known for its famous energy drink, Red Bull, which is a functional drink that contains caffeine, taurine, B group vitamins, sucrose and glucose, as well as water. Besides the traditional Red Bull, the company has “Red Bull Sugar-free, Red Bull Spring Sugar-free”, “Red Bull Total Zero”, and “Red Bull Red, White, Purple, Yellow, Green, Apricot, Blue, Sea Blue, and Winter Edition” in its portfolio. The drinks are sold in 8.4 fluid ounce (250 ml) cans. In the last decade, the number of cans sold also increased and peaked in 2025 with almost 14 billion cans. In addition to the production and sale of drinks, the Red Bull GmbH is well known for its involvement in sponsoring extreme sports and motorsports. In total, Red Bull employed nearly 22,000 people worldwide by the end of 2025.  Red Bull in the United States. No other country in the world achieves such high sales in the energy drinks industry as the United States. The market is therefore essential for the Austrian beverage manufacturer. According to a ranking of the top energy drink brands in the U.S. in 2026, Red Bull was the most popular brand. It ranked first, based on generated sales of nearly ten billion U.S. dollars. Competitors such as Monster and Celsius ranked second and third. The high popularity is also shown in the  brand awareness among energy drink consumers, which amounted to 82 percent in the United States that same year.

Consumers care deeply about how, what they eat, and drink, affects their well-being. In the European Union, about 50 percent of consumers try to actively eat healthy. Consequently, health concerns influence various dietary decisions. For some this means cutting down on meat, for others it means cutting artificial flavors and preservatives, or sugar, and this just scratches the surface. Unfortunately, about 13 percent of Europeans say that they just can’t afford to eat healthily. Meat consumption. Close to half of Europeans that have reduced their red meat consumption cited health as a factor why they took this step. It is not the sole reason to forgo meat, but appears consistently next to environmental and animal welfare concerns as a reason to eat less red meat. Per-capita meat consumption in Europe is forecast to decline. Especially red meat, often associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases, is looking at a future with reduced consumption figures. Poultry meat is expected to increase its share of the market. Compared to beef and pork, it is expected to see a slight increase in per capita consumption. Health and dietary choices. Some dietary habits are a direct consequence of health conditions. Prime examples are food allergies and intolerances. Younger consumers are more likely to have food intolerances than older consumers. People in their thirties are the most likely to have one or more food intolerances. Two common food intolerances are lactose and gluten intolerance. Following a  lactose-free diet is slightly more common among the European population. 11 percent of survey respondents in the EU stated they were following a lactose-free diet, while seven percent said the same about avoiding gluten in their diet. Not all who eat lactose or gluten-free will have a food intolerance. Vegans, for example, also avoid any dairy products. In part, consumers adapted their diets because of their personal health conditions. Other consumers adapt their diets to prevent developing health conditions and to retain their health as best as possible.

A wide variety of consumer goods is enriched with flavors and scents that make the difference. These components are part of the flavor and fragrance (F&F) market, and they can be natural or artificial. Consumers can find them in both food and non-food products, like beverages or personal care items. The value of the global flavor and fragrance market amounted to some 35 billion euros in 2019 and increased to over 56.6 billion euros as of 2025. In the same year, the flavor segment of the industry generated about 20.5 billion euros, making it the division with the highest market value. Fragrance came in second, while pet food ingredients made up the smallest division. Leading vendors in Europe. Several big names can be found within the global flavors and fragrances industry. As of 2025, Givaudan, IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances), Symrise, and dsm-firmenich were the “four giants” that accounted for more than half of the global F&F market. Givaudan, a Swiss-based F&F manufacturer, has experienced steady growth in its total group sales over the past few years, generating almost 7.5 billion Swiss francs in 2025, of which about an equal amount came from the sale of flavors and the sale of fragrences. In the same period, the German company Symrise AG reached nearly five billion euros in global sales. Its most successful segment proved to be Taste, Nutrition, and Health. United States: International Flavor & Fragrances Inc. With a global market size of about nine percent, International Flavor & Fragrances Inc., a.k.a. IFF, can be considered one of the leading players of the flavor and fragrance market. The American company, founded in 1958 and currently headquartered in New York, recently saw a remarkable spike in its global net sales, which reached over 10.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Most of these sales came from the EMEA region and North America. Another impressive increase could be observed in the company’s total R&D spending, which reached a peak of roughly 694 million U.S. dollars as of 2025.  Flavors and fragrances can be a deal-breaker when it comes to purchasing a product. As consumers' wishes change, and for example, many of them opt for more and more natural and organic products, this market might soon evolve, and its leading players will have to quickly cater to these needs.

Switzerland is known today as the leader of the watchmaking scene. Swiss watches are said to be some of the most reliable, attractive, well-crafted products. Swiss watchmaking has also withstood the test of time, surviving the invention of Quartz watches, digital watches, as well as smart watches. Today, Swiss watches can be seen as a luxury item, and many people buy them for their superior quality and status. Revenue in the luxury watches and jewelry segment worldwide surpassed 150 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, underscoring the scale of global demand. Swiss watch exports worldwide. In 2025, global Swiss watch exports were valued at approximately 25.6 billion Swiss francs. The leading destination for Swiss watch exports was the United States, which accounted for approximately 17 percent of all exports that year, followed by Japan and China. In recent years, the majority of Swiss watch export value has been driven by luxury items. Swiss watches valued over three thousand Swiss francs account for an overwhelming share of the market export value. Neuchâtel at the heart of Swiss watchmaking. As of 2025, there were 685 individual companies within the Swiss watchmaking industry. The highest number of these watchmaking companies are located in the canton of Neuchâtel. Around 190 Swiss watch companies operate in that canton alone. Unsurprisingly, Rolex is the brand with the largest market share of Swiss watches in the world. In 2025, the brand pulled in the highest sales revenue among luxury watch makers. Rolex is a luxury Swiss watch manufacturer located in Geneva, Switzerland. Cartier held the second-largest brand share, while Omega, which is now a subsidiary of the Swatch Group, ranked fourth. The Swatch Group's revenues have fluctuated over the years; in the financial year 2025, the company generated around 6.3 billion Swiss francs. Even as total Swiss watch export value eased slightly from 2024, the dominance of high-end timepieces in the export mix points to an industry that continues to bet on luxury as its foundation.

Even though the ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030 launched in 2025 aims to rebuild European military deterrence, the EU has limited competences in security matters, that are mostly under the control of single member states. Russia’s re-emergence as a military power and the U.S.’s alleged disengagement in European defense have driven EU countries toward a stronger common defense policy and the establishment of a European army. Although the integration of national armed forces has progressed since 2018, the EU is still far from this project, due to the absence of a centralized military command and different security priorities among member states. Hence, cooperation within the NATO framework is viewed as the most feasible option to secure European defense in the short/medium term. The European Security and Defense Policy. As defense is a prerogative of single member states, policy has been slow and is often met with resistance. For example, France opposed the plan for a unified European defense force as far back as the 1950s, and EU enlargement in recent decades has complicated the process of establishing a unified military policy. In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty established the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) for enhancing collaboration within the EU on foreign and security policy. In 2017, the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) was launched, aiming to structurally integrate the armed forces of all member states under the coordination of the European Defense Agency. The Treaty also requires member states to assist any Union member under attack, similarly to NATO’s article 5. NATO’s role in EU security. After Sweden joined the alliance in 2024, 23 EU member states are also NATO countries. Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, and Malta remain neutral but participate in the CSDP. Following the rejection of a European defense force, the EU has primarily relied on the U.S. and NATO for security, with European countries cutting military personnel and consistently keeping defense spending below NATO targets. Recently, the U.S. announced the intention to reduce its involvement in European security. Although this was viewed negatively by European publics, it incentivized EU institutions to promote larger investments in the defense sector. However, the U.S. still maintains more than 50,000 active-duty soldiers in EU countries. ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030. The Commission launched the ReArm Europe Plan to stimulate defense expenditure and deter future aggression, by mobilizing up to 800 billion euros. Member states can increase their security spending deficit by up to 650 billion euros, while the EU will provide up to 150 billion euros in loans funded through borrowing. The plan aims to coordinate security spending across the bloc and target investments to address critical defense capability gaps and military infrastructure. It also ensures continued military support for Ukraine. Some view strengthening the EU’s military capabilities as the first step toward a European defense force, while critics argue it could simply result in the rearmament of individual member states, since EU military expenditure already surpasses that of Russia. You will find more infographics at Statista Difficulties of a European army. Although the EU is promoting defense spending, the lack of a centralized military command and differing security priorities among member states hinder the establishment of a European army. Without political unity, controlling a single military force remains unfeasible. EU countries bordering Russia consider rearmament fundamental to prevent potential future aggressions. Conversely, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria favor the loosening of sanctions and closer collaboration with Moscow. France is often involved in the security of its former colonies in West Africa, although most French troops are gradually withdrawing. Instead, southern EU countries prioritize security of the Mediterranean and stability of North Africa, also to manage migration flows. However, European public opinion largely supports a common defense force, and almost half of Britons favor UK participation in a European army. Since this will likely take a long time, NATO remains essential for European security in the short term, with Readiness 2030 investments helping member states meet the required spending targets.

As students in the United States brace themselves to say goodbye to their summer freedom and head back to school, parents are bracing themselves to say goodbye to their paycheck. During the 2026 back-to-school (BTS) shopping season, which typically takes place in the summer and early autumn, American parents, guardians, and children were planning to spend an estimated total of over 43 billion U.S. dollars. That figure set a new record, surpassing the previous high of 41.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. For 2026 specifically, this would equate to roughly  864 U.S. dollars in school supply expenses per American household. What are parents buying? Some of the most common educational necessities bought by guardians of schoolchildren include clothing and accessories, as well as school supplies, such as books, pens, backpacks, and more. As technology has advanced, electronics have become a necessity for many schoolchildren. On average, parents planned to spend roughly 293 U.S. dollars on  electronics and computer-related equipment, followed by about 250 U.S. dollars on clothing. Still, clothing and related accessories took up the lion's share of parents' budget in 2026, accounting for more than half of total expenditure. Tariffs, AI, and the rising cost of BTS. The economic climate has had a large impact on the prices of retail goods, and the implementation of tariffs has driven the price of back-to-school items up. Consumers have implemented various methods to combat these price hikes including buying different brands compared to the previous year, going to different retailers, and purchasing fewer clothing items. However, an increase in price is not the only cause of rising back-to-school costs. A majority of parents feel that they are asked to buy too many items, which naturally leads to more spending. Meanwhile, digitally proficient parents who use search engines, social media, and generative AI planned to spend nearly double what non-tech users budgeted, suggesting that AI-savvy households are engaging more deeply with BTS shopping. The back-to-class season has gotten more expensive over time, with consumers spending more than twice as much as they used to back in the mid-2000s. In fact, back-to-school ranks among the leading consumer spending events in the country by average per-person outlay, trailing only back-to-college, a trend that shows no signs of slowing down.

Perhaps one of the most recognizable brands on the planet, thanks to the 'Swoosh' logo and "Just Do It" slogan, Nike is the world's largest supplier and manufacturer of athletic shoes and apparel, as well as a major supplier of sports equipment. Nike, Inc. is the owner of a number of brands, including Nike, Converse, and Jordan, and the company is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, United States. Some of the other big players within the industry are adidas, Puma, and Under Armour. A short introduction to Nike. The company that named itself after the Greek goddess of victory markets several products under its own brand, including, but not limited to Nike Pro, Nike+, Nike Blazers, Nike Dunk, as well as Air Max, Air Jordan, Phantom. Globally, Nike sponsors many high-profile athletes, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Sha'Carri Richardson, LeBron James, and Rafael Nadal, as well as sports clubs like FC Barcelona, and Paris Saint-Germain. Just Do It. Nike is one of the most valuable apparel brands, boasting a brand value of almost 30 billion U.S. dollars. In other words, Nike is not just the world’s leading sports clothing brand, it is also one of the most valuable apparel brand overall. The company also has a very strong financial record, generating over 50 billion U.S. dollars in revenue during 2023 and 2024, however the financial year 2026 saw a dip in revenue to just over 46 billion U.S. dollars. There are three main business segments from which Nike generates its sales, namely, footwear, apparel, and equipment. The largest segment, footwear, led the way in terms of sales revenue, bringing in approximately 29.5 billion U.S. dollars in the fiscal year ended May 2026.  Nike's 2026 revenue is nothing to scoff at, it was a significant decrease compared to the previous two years. The tariffs imposed by the United States on imports will have a big impact on the revenue of many retail companies, including Nike. However, even with the effects from tariffs, Nike is likely to remain a go-to brand among consumers.

Europe's DIY, building materials, and home improvement retail sector is one of the continent's largest consumer-facing industries. European DIY hardware market revenue reached 391.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, with projections pointing to nearly 445 billion U.S. dollars by 2030. The two largest national markets illustrate the sector's geographic weight: Germany 's DIY hardware store market generated 59.16 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, while the United Kingdom 's DIY and hardware store market reached 35.82 billion U.S. dollars in the same year. Market leaders operate across borders. Kingfisher, headquartered in the UK, operates home improvement brands across multiple European countries, including B&Q, Screwfix, and Castorama. In financial year 2025/26, Kingfisher's sales across Europe totaled approximately 6.73 billion British pounds in the UK and Ireland, 3.87 billion pounds in France, and 1.84 billion pounds in Poland. France's Groupe ADEO, the parent company of Leroy Merlin, also holds a top position in European DIY retail. Its flagship brand alone generated nearly four billion euros in sales in Spain in 2025, illustrating the group's reach across southern Europe. However, Poland is where the competition is most concentrated: both Castorama and Leroy Merlin operated popular DIY stores in Poland, each reaching 100 locations by the end of 2025.  Central and Eastern Europe still expanding. Poland leads Europe on consumer demand. In 2026, building material purchases across Europe were highest there, with 21 percent of consumers reporting purchases of such products in the past year, compared with 19 percent in Germany and 18 percent in the UK. Romania's Dedeman makes the structural upside concrete: the company's annual revenue in Romania rose to over 13.16 billion Romanian lei in 2025, nearly four times the 3.41 billion recorded in 2014. For retailers eyeing expansion, these trends suggest that Central and Eastern European markets offer considerable room for growth, while Western markets manage saturation.

Most beauty aficionados have their favorite shop where they can discover new product launches and test the items they are interested in, and for many, this place is Sephora. The French retailer was founded over 50 years ago, and thanks to its presence in some 35 countries and a great number of stores, it is now one of the leading shopping destinations for beauty and personal care products. In the late 90's, Sephora became part of LVMH and expanded its activity to the United States with the opening of its first shop in New York. Billions in beauty sales. Having expanded to the Middle East, Canada, and other markets over the years, Sephora has built a truly global footprint. In 2025, the retailer boasted nearly 18 billion U.S. dollars in worldwide sales, with about half of that total generated in the United States. These outstanding results led Sephora to be listed among the leading health and beauty retailers in the country. Sephora is also very popular in its country of origin, holding the top spot among French consumers' favorite retail beauty brands as of 2026. Young consumers and the Sephora frenzy. Sephora has recently been in the news as a result of the abundance of beauty lovers and influencers belonging to Generation Alpha, who appear to be interested in prestige brands such as Drunk Elephant, and have caused controversy thanks to their behavior inside the retailer's shops. The so-called Sephora Kids phenomenon has even prompted broader conversations about youth marketing in the beauty industry. However, Sephora has always been a favorite of younger generations: according to a 2025 survey, it is the  leading beauty shopping destination among U.S. teenagers, ahead of Ulta. The retailer has also expanded its digital presence, with sephora.com e-commerce net sales surpassing four billion dollars in 2025 and became one of the most-mentioned brands on TikTok in 2025, cited by about 13.4 thousand influencers worldwide. With close to nine billion dollars in U.S. retail sales in 2025 and growing popularity across age groups, Sephora's position at the top of the beauty retail landscape looks secure.

The beauty industry is filled with many companies, but not all of them are influential enough to shape it. Among these, the L'Oréal Group has become the undisputed leader of the cosmetics and beauty market. Founded in 1909, L'Oréal's journey started in France, more precisely in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, with the creation of "Oréale", a hair dye formula. To this day, the company has not only become a consumer favorite but is also seen as the leading beauty manufacturer worldwide, with revenues amounting to about 49.7 billion U.S. dollars as of 2025. L'Oréal is primarily focused on perfumes, hair care, make-up, and skin care, with the latter generating over 37 percent of its global cosmetic sales during fiscal year 2025.  L'Oréal's impact. L'Oréal currently owns 40 international brands and registered over 720 patents in 2025 alone. Among its brands, L’Oréal Paris is the most successful, followed by Lancôme and Garnier. In the year 2025, L'Oréal's market share in Europe was estimated to amount to about 33 percent, and consolidated sales in that region reached a value of almost 17 billion euros. However, L’Oréal’s fame is not limited to Europe: some of its brands are among the most chosen health & beauty brands worldwide. Innovating the world of beauty. L'Oréal's research and development expenses have increased overtime, reaching a peak of 1.38 billion euros in 2025. The company has been working towards innovating the world of beauty in recent years, focusing especially on beauty tech, using AI and AR to produce devices or software aimed at improving the beauty consumer's journey. L'Oréal is also expanding through different acquisitions: in 2023, the purchase of beauty brand Aesop for over two billion U.S. dollars was announced, while in 2024 the company acquired a ten percent stake in skin care company Galderma. In 2025, the company announced plans to acquire the Kering Group 's beauty business, which includes developing fragrances for brands such as Gucci or Balenciaga.  L'Oréal's contribution plays a big role in the fast-paced world that is the beauty industry, to the point where it becomes almost impossible not to wonder what its next move will be.

Wheat is one of the oldest cereal grasses in the world and is produced in almost every American state. The many varieties of this cereal grain are used to make numerous types of food, such as bread, pasta, cake, and flour. The United States produced about 54 million metric tons of wheat during 2025/26, putting the country in fifth place in terms of global wheat production for that period. That year, the United States was also the fifth-largest principal exporter of wheat, flour and wheat products. Russia and the European Union were the largest exporters of wheat that year. Fewer acres, bigger harvests. In the United States, about 45.3 million acres of wheat were planted, and about 37.2 million acres were harvested in 2025. Total U.S. wheat acreage has trended gradually lower over the past two decades, even as output per acre has improved. U.S. wheat production dipped in the early 2020s before climbing back to around 54 million metric tons in 2025/26. Wheat harvests are often measured in bushels, a traditional unit of volume equal to eight dry gallons. Kansas takes the lead. In 2025, the leading wheat-producing U.S. state was Kansas, which cultivated an estimated 346.8 million bushels of wheat. North Dakota, the state that had long topped the ranking, slipped into second place that year with a harvest of about 334.1 million bushels. A steady supplier to the world. A great deal of the wheat produced in the United States is exported to other countries around the globe: during 2024/25, U.S. wheat exports reached about 22.7 million metric tons, while the country imported roughly 4.1 million metric tons of wheat in that period. This steady surplus highlights the country's role as a reliable wheat supplier even as domestic planted acreage continues to shrink. Looking ahead, American wheat growers are likely to remain an important source of supply for import-dependent countries such as Egypt and Indonesia.

The United States' mining industry has a long history, and it continues to be an economically important industry. The most common commodities produced in the U.S. based on volume include sand and gravel, stone, and coal. Other mineral products, produced in smaller quantities, typically carry higher prices. Products produced through mining provide the foundation for all manufacturing, giving factories the raw materials needed to produce goods. Accordingly, the value added by the mining industry to the U.S. economy amounted to over 81 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, generated by 12,616 active mines across the country as of 2023. Lately, especially critical mineral production has ramped up in the U.S. Mineral commodity production in the United States. Among those higher-priced commodities are precious metals. The United States still mines hundreds of tons of gold each year, alongside meaningful volumes of silver and base metals such as copper and iron ore. This output comes from 271 active metal mines in the U.S. as of 2023, a small share of the broader mining sector, which also produces over 120 million metric tons of industrial sand and gravel annually to support the country's massive construction industry. Billion-dollar giants in the U.S. mining business. Revenues of the leading United States' mining companies are in the billions of U.S. dollars. The largest U.S.-based firm in terms of revenue in 2026 was copper and molybdenum miner Freeport-McMoRan, followed closely by the gold miner Newmont Corporation, with steel producer Steel Dynamics rounding out the top three. While contributing considerable economic activity to the U.S., these are hardly the largest mining companies globally; the leading mining companies worldwide are based primarily in the UK, China, and Japan. However, despite the technological advances and automation of some of the more dangerous aspects of the work, U.S. mining firms continue to provide considerable domestic employment, which amounted to roughly 571,000 mining jobs as of 2025. Social and environmental footprint of the U.S. mining industry. The workplace hazards associated with mining have long been a point of controversy. While the industry has embraced safer practices, there are still a steady number of mining fatalities in the U.S. each year. Environmental activists have had some success, however, including millions of acres of land reclaimed from the mining industry, mainly from former coal mines. This highlights the potential for environmental issues to arise due to its impact on the environment. Looking ahead, nearshoring measures are gaining traction in the U.S. due to concerns over critical minerals supply, and lithium production in the country has picked up again as new projects move through exploration and development.

Platinum is a gray-white colored precious metal. It has many important applications, most notably for autocatalysts, jewelry, and chemicals, in addition to several other industries that use platinum to a lesser degree. Automotive applications accounted for over 43 percent of global platinum demand as of 2026, making it by far the largest application. Platinum is highly resistant to corrosion, and thus its value is somewhat comparable to gold. For instance, platinum's average price in 2025 was around 1,286 U.S. dollars per troy ounce, while the average price of gold that year was about 3,442 U.S. dollars per ounce. The leading platinum producers in the world. The largest platinum producing country by far is South Africa, having produced an estimated 120 metric tons of platinum in 2025. Russia was the second-largest platinum producing country in the world, with production of some 20 metric tons in that year, while Zimbabwe ranked third with an estimated 18 metric tons. Much of this output comes from politically unstable producer nations, underscoring the geopolitical sensitivity of platinum supply chains. Anglo American Platinum is one of the world's largest platinum producing companies, with a production of some 1.85 million ounces of platinum in 2024. Platinum group metals. Platinum group metals (PGMs), also called platinoids, refers to six precious metals that share similar physical and chemical properties and which tend to be found in the same mineral deposits. The PGMs are palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, osmium, iridium, and of course platinum itself. The majority of the world's PGM supply comes from mine production, but autocatalyst scrap is another significant source. Palladium is the most prominent PGM after platinum, with global palladium production amounting to 190 metric tons in 2025. Russia stood as the world's leading palladium producer that year, with an estimated 84 metric tons of mined palladium. Despite its rarity, platinum is in high demand due to its versatility, and its range of industrial applications continues to expand.

The steel industry is regarded as one of the biggest and most dynamic industries globally. New developments in the sector have a significant impact on global economies, yet it remains highly susceptible to international events. The war between Russia and Ukraine exacerbated the scarcity of raw materials and energy used in steel production, while a broader energy and cost-of-living crisis curbed global consumption. Since then, global crude steel production has seen a continued decline, falling from 1,904 million metric tons in 2023 to approximately 1,850 million metric tons in 2025. Monthly crude steel production has also fluctuated amid these pressures, with a dip recorded in December 2023 in the major producing countries. China is the global steel market leader. China led the steel export market in 2025, dwarfing all other countries by more than 100 million metric tons. Over the years, China, the world's biggest steel producer, has increased production and flooded the markets with cheap steel. The China-based steelmaker, Baowu Group, was the world's largest crude steel producer in 2025, with an output of around 124.8 million metric tons, followed by the Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal with roughly 63.4 million metric tons. Baowu Group also reported revenues of around 125.1 billion dollars, about 62.7 billion more than its main competitor as of 2025. Does steel scrap the future? The steel sector generates a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions due to its energy-intensive production processes, making decarbonization an increasingly pressing topic amid the Paris Agreement goals. In 2024, the global average emissions intensity of steel production amounted to 1.92 metric tons of carbon dioxide per metric ton of crude steel cast. Using recycled steel scrap is one of the most effective ways to cut emissions, since steel is the most widely recycled material on the planet and scrap use reduces the need for mineral and energy resources. In 2025, around 480 million metric tons of steel scrap were consumed across the leading producing markets, with China alone accounting for roughly 227 million metric tons, or about 47 percent of the total. Steel scrap can not only make the industry less carbon-intensive but also ease its reliance on raw materials. As of 2025, over half of global steel end-use was attributed to the building and infrastructure sector, underlining why abundant, affordable scrap supply will remain central to the industry's environmental and economic future.

With an area of approximately 8.5 million square kilometers, Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world by area, and with more than 213 million inhabitants it is the seventh most populous nation. Brazil’s largest cities are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and the capital Brasília, although much of Brazil's international reputation is attached to its nature, particularly the Amazon rainforest. With its growing economy, BRICS membership, and prominent role in the fight against climate change, recent decades have seen Brazil gradually transition from a regional to a global power.  Demographics. Brazil is highly urbanized despite its large size, and it has the second highest urbanization rate of any country with over 100 million inhabitants (after Japan). The majority of the population lives along coastal regions, especially to the east and south. Brazil's fertility rate has been below replacement level since the early 2000s; however, its birth rate is still well above its death rate, suggesting continued population growth in the coming years. Historically, Brazil's net migration rate was negative, meaning the number of emigrants leaving was higher than the number of immigrants arriving. Economy. Brazil is also among the leading emerging countries, the so-called BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), before the group expanded to eleven members. Its  gross domestic product (GDP) amounted to over 2.27 trillion U.S. dollars in 2025, making it one of the largest economies in the world. Economic growth has been ongoing in the country since 2021. In 2026, it is expected that the country will have almost two percent growth.  The South American country's exports (primarily commodities such as iron ore, petroleum, and agricultural goods) are worth over 348 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, and imported goods are valued at over 293 billion U.S. dollars, making it a net exporter of goods. The GDP per capita of Brazil peaked in 2011, before falling significantly during the economic difficulties that followed the 2014 economic crisis, as well as during the pandemic - while the figure is expected to grow throughout the remainder of the 2020s, projections until 2028 still do not exceed 2011 levels. Brazil’s unemployment rate has also spiked throughout the pandemic years, although in 2025 the rate was the lowest it's been in more than 30 years, breaking the six percent mark. Similar trends in Brazil's  inflation rate can also be observed over the past decade, with annual increases as high as nine percent in 2015 and 2022, but it was significantly lower during the next three years. Future outlook. Brazil remains a regional powerhouse with global aspirations, balancing economic recovery, demographic shifts, and environmental responsibility. Although challenges persist, particularly regarding income distribution, its large market and strategic resources position it for gradual growth in the years to come.

From innumerable trends to increasingly growing revenues, the beauty and personal care industry has been thriving in the last few years. With global revenues reaching nearly 650 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, this market is one of the most profitable, and forecasts predict its growth will not reach an end anytime soon. Like many others, this highly competitive sector has also seen a surge in mergers and acquisitions in the past years. Portfolio expansions through more or less niche brands, the demand for sustainability and innovations, as well as new markets to tap into are some of the driving forces behind the beauty industry’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity. The beauty sector’s slowdown. Despite the industry’s success, in the most recent years, the number of M&A deals in the sector has decreased, especially after the peak recorded in 2021. Indeed, as of 2023, the number of announced transactions added up to 152, showing a decline of over 30 percent compared to just a year before. Europe was the leading region in 2023, with about 65 deals, followed by Asia and Oceania. Being one of the most profitable segments of the beauty and personal care industries, it comes as no surprise that skincare was the subsector with the highest deal volume that year, with personal care and makeup ranking second and third. The prestige beauty sector. Prestige/luxury beauty recorded outstanding results. Although many beauty companies have been affected by the industry’s slowdown, especially in markets like China, U.S. prestige beauty keeps on outpacing the mass market and recorded sales of about 32 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. M&A activity in this sector has fluctuated, registering around 21 deals in 2023, slightly lower than in the previous year. The same can be said about the average M&A deal value, which peaked in 2022, and amounted to nearly 820 million U.S. dollars a year later. The most talked about deals. In 2023, French beauty giant L'Oréal made the news with the announcement of the acquisition of Aesop. The deal was valued at around 2.5 billion U.S. dollars, and it is only one of the largest M&A deals in the beauty sectors recorded since 2019. In that year, ETQ & Partners acquired Galderma, previously under Nestlé, for about 11.5 billion U.S. dollars. Another noteworthy acquisition in the sector saw Estée Lauder becoming the owner of the Tom Ford brand in 2023. As of 2024, ChapStick was acquired by Suave Brands. In the same year, L'Oréal acquired a 10 percent stake in Galderma; while Estée Lauder completed the acquisition of DECIEM, the creator of the brand The Ordinary. In the current economic landscape, M&A activity in the beauty sector has slowed down compared to just a few years ago. However, companies are still aiming to grow and gain relevance in emerging markets, while improving their sustainability practices and technological solutions.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is emerging as a crucial tool in climate mitigation, offering both energy generation and net-negative emissions. The process involves using biomass, such as crops, wood, or organic waste, as fuel to produce energy, then subsequently  capturing and permanently storing the resulting CO2 emissions. BECCS is especially suitable for carbon removal because it captures CO2 that was originally absorbed from the atmosphere by plants, unlike fossil-based CCS, which only prevents new emissions. This makes BECCS one of the few technologies that can actually deliver net-negative emissions, a critical requirement for reaching global climate targets, though the capture capacity of operational BECCS facilities worldwide remains far too small to make a meaningful dent on its own. Small capacity, big storage questions. The global development of BECCS is still in its nascent stages, with operational capacity significantly lower than what would be necessary to meet net-zero climate targets. Several billion metric tons of CO2 are already removed from the atmosphere worldwide each year, but almost all of it comes from conventional land-based methods such as reforestation, leaving BECCS as a tiny niche. Currently, biogenic CO2 captured by BECCS facilities amounts to just under two million metric tons per year, and how this captured carbon is stored splits roughly two to one in favor of permanent storage: around 1.38 million metric tons go into deep saline formations, while the remaining 600,000 metric tons support enhanced oil recovery (EOR), where CO2 is injected into active oil reservoirs to extract additional oil. While EOR offers a potential economic incentive for BECCS development, it raises concerns about aligning the technology with long-term climate goals. That is set to change, as the pipeline of BECCS projects now in development grows, with more than 90 facilities underway and a combined projected capture capacity exceeding 37 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Trade-offs on land, food and water. Despite its considerable potential, BECCS faces a range of significant challenges and criticisms that must be addressed for its sustainable and effective deployment. The large-scale deployment of BECCS, particularly if it relies on dedicated energy crops, raises substantial sustainability concerns. As global bioenergy capacity continues to expand, large-scale biomass production increasingly competes for land with food crops, posing a threat to global food security. Furthermore, the cultivation of large-scale monocultures for biomass production presents substantial threats to biodiversity. Beyond land, BECCS also entails considerable water demands, which could strain water resources in many regions. BECCS holds a critical position in the global effort to combat anthropogenic environmental change. Its distinctive ability to both generate energy and actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere makes it an indispensable technology for achieving ambitious net-zero climate targets. This potential hasn't gone unnoticed by investors, as funding for carbon removal technologies has climbed significantly in recent years, though BECCS still needs progress on sustainability to deliver on its promise. However, despite its promising potential, the widespread and sustainable deployment of BECCS is contingent upon rigorously addressing a complex array of challenges.

The smartphone market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has undergone remarkable transformation, emerging as one of the fastest-growing regions for mobile technology adoption, with smartphone subscriptions expected to rise from 540 million in 2024 to about 710 million by 2030. Driven by urbanization, rising internet penetration, and a growing middle class, smartphones have become essential tools transforming daily life across the region. Mobile technology and smartphones in MENA. Smartphone penetration in MENA is highest in the GCC sub-region, with countries like the United Arab Emirates  (UAE) exceeding 97 percent in 2024. Governments in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are prioritizing investment in technologies such as 5G to accelerate digital transformation and build knowledge-based economies. Smartphones are at the center of this shift, driving the adoption of digital payments and other online services. The rollout of 5G, coupled with increased mobile internet usage, is expected to fuel demand for more advanced smartphones, with regional smartphone subscriptions projected to approach 720 billion by 2030. The adoption of 5G in MENA is gaining momentum, with the number of 5G subscribers expected to reach 500 million by 2030. While 4G remains the dominant mobile technology today, 5G is forecasted to account for 50 percent of all connections in the region by the end of the decade. This rapid transition is being driven by network expansion and mobile operators’ efforts to migrate users from older networks. However, adoption rates vary across the region—GCC countries lead in 5G uptake due to their strong economies and government-led digital initiatives, while other parts of MENA remain in earlier stages of deployment. The number of 5G subscriptions in the GCC is expected to see significant growth in the coming years as infrastructure continues to expand. Smartphone brands in the GCC. Saudi Arabia, the GCC’s largest smartphone market, accounts for over half of the region’s smartphone shipments, with growing demand for both premium and mid-range devices. As of January 2024, Apple’s market share in Saudi Arabia dropped to 30 percent, its lowest since 2019, while Samsung followed with 20.6 percent. Despite Apple’s decline, it remains dominant in the premium segment, while Samsung and Xiaomi continue to expand in the mid-range market. With increasing 5G adoption and evolving consumer preferences, competition in the GCC smartphone market is expected to intensify. The MENA smartphone market is rapidly evolving with 5G expansion, shifting consumer preferences, and rising demand for both premium and budget-friendly devices, making it a key hub for mobile innovation.

Be it for calling a friend in London or using the internet to navigate the streets of Edinburgh, smartphones have become indispensable, with the United Kingdom (UK) counting over 84 million mobile cellular subscriptions. Over the years, smartphone adoption has surged, and with cutting-edge advancements like AI-powered smartphones and lightning-fast 5G networks, this trend is only set to grow. From young tech enthusiasts to seasoned professionals, people of all ages continue to embrace the latest innovations that keep them connected. Apple is ahead in the UK. The UK smartphone industry   – forecast to record revenues of nearly 11 billion British pounds by 2029 – mirrors the dynamics of the global market. Apple and Samsung are the main market players, with Apple leading it with just under 50 percent of the market in 2024, ahead of the steady 30 percent Samsung has maintained over the years. On the other hand, the UK operating system market shows a more even split between Apple and Android devices, with 55 percent of active devices running on Android and almost 45 percent on Apple iOS. Apps remain a key attraction for smartphone users. What makes smartphones truly indispensable? Apps. More than just communication tools, smartphones leverage their computing power, internet access, cameras, and GPS to enhance daily life. In 2023, internet browsers, social media apps, and e-mail services were the most popular app types in the UK. Particularly, in 2024, WhatsApp and Facebook recorded the highest reach among consumers. Other social media apps, such as YouTube or Instagram, recorded slightly lower shares. 5G set to shape the smartphone market. 5G – the fifth generation of mobile broadband technology – is set to shape developments in the global smartphone industry. Mobile providers in the UK purchased licenses to operate on 5G-relevant frequencies as early as 2018. Since then, the number of 5G connections in the country has increased and, by 2030, it is estimated that 5G will account for 93 percent of all mobile connections. As aresult, in the UK and elsewhere, next-generation mobile technology will continue to shape the smartphone industry, with the major vendors needing to stay ahead of the curve, preparing for the smartphones of tomorrow.

eSports, or electronic sports, is a rapidly growing international trend. Organized competitive video gaming has become increasingly lucrative, with prize money totaling up to 30 million U.S. dollars each year. Combined, Asia and the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) account for more than 56 percent of the global eSports billion dollar market. According to the MENA Gaming & eSports Summit 2023, there are over 377 million gamers across the Middle East alone. Current eSports market. Due to high mobile internet user penetration rates in the Middle East and North Africa, a massive young population, and an intense interest in digital technologies, the region’s gaming industry is expanding at an unprecedented rate. Egypt has the region's largest gaming population, Saudi Arabia has the most gaming revenue, while the United Arab Emirates has the highest revenue per user. Egypt has the region's largest gaming population, Saudi Arabia has the most gaming revenue, while the United Arab Emirates has the highest revenue per user. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have the highest forecasted eSports revenue in the MENA region, given their high-income levels, public investment projects, and efforts to diversify their oil-dependent economies. Saudi Arabia’s high interest and participation rates in gaming and eSports has supported the industry’s rapid growth. Multiple million-dollar tournaments have recently been organized in Saudi Arabia, such as the Dota 2 Riyadh Masters 2022 and the Gamers8 eSports Festival with a 15 million U.S. dollar prize pool. These events are sponsored by some of the biggest brands globally, such as LG, Mastercard, Spotify, and others. Top eSport players and teams. The MENA region's eSports organizations are fast expanding and becoming more structured. YaLLa eSports is one of the most popular eSports organizations in the Middle East, based in Dubai, and sponsored by Intel, Burger King, and ASUS. Team Falcons, based in Saudi Arabia, is another example of one of the strongest organizations in the Middle East. They have gained significant international success in games like Rocket League, placing third at the Gamers8 2022. On the other hand, Jordan has the region’s top player with winnings valuing up to 4.9 million U.S. dollars, followed by Lebanon’s top earning player Maroun (GH) Merhej.

The United Kingdom (UK) has one of the largest online populations worldwide and in Europe. With over 60 million internet users, the country is fourth in Europe, and 17th in the world. By 2028, the country is forecast to have around 63 million online users. Most of the UK’s population, about 98 percent, has access to the internet, ranking sixth worldwide by internet penetration rate. Furthermore, the share of households with internet access in the country was 95 percent. Who is using the internet the most in the UK? The UK’s most active internet users were individuals between 30 and 39 years old. This age group made up almost 30 percent of all internet users in the country. Meanwhile, the share of men and women going online was almost the same, with only a two percent difference. A survey among internet users in the United Kingdom (UK) also found that the majority of them were full-time employees. Approximately 30 percent of those using online services and platforms had a bachelor’s degree. What digital device is often used in the UK? As of 2025, smartphones have a well-established dominance over other digital devices connecting to the internet. In the UK, roughly 77 percent of the time spent online was via a smartphone. On average, people in the United Kingdom spent three hours and 50 minutes online daily, including almost three hours via a smartphone. Young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 years were among the most active smartphone users. Mobile internet and app usage in the UK. As of 2025, around 58 million individuals in the United Kingdom (UK) were using mobile internet, which translates to around 84 percent of the country’s total population. On smartphones, people mainly use internet browsers, e-mail services, and social media apps. The most popular app category in the UK as of 2024 was tool apps. Apps in this category were downloaded around 377 million times in the UK in 2024. Productivity apps ranked second, with about 313 million downloads, followed by entertainment apps, with over 252 million downloads. Social media usage in the UK. As of 2025, there were around 54 million social media users in the United Kingdom. Facebook had the highest market share in the country, over 60 percent, while Twitter ranked second, with about 14 percent. Used more often by older generations, Facebook had nearly 51 million users nationwide. The number of Instagram users amounted to over 34 million as of 2025. Online privacy and data protection. More than a third of internet users in the United Kingdom were concerned about how companies might use their online data. Meanwhile, over 70 percent were worried about what is real and what is fake on the internet. Furthermore, nearly half of UK internet users decline cookies on websites. The internet usage landscape in the UK is diverse. It aligns with the internet usage patterns of other English-speaking big online markets, such as the United States. The market is also moving towards a more digitally literate environment.

Ads targeting mobile devices account for 48 percent of digital advertising spending in Europe, which puts Europe below the global average of 62 percent. It is also worth pointing out that no European country is among the top 10 markets with the largest share of mobile in digital ad spending. Considering that industry sources put Europe’s digital ad spend at over 69 billion euros in 2020, mobile investments likely stood at around 31 billion euros, respectively. Europe’s largest mobile ad market – the United Kingdom – accounts for well over half of that sum. Marketers’ behavior. European marketers seem to be trying to catch up with the global trend. More than 60 percent of marketers said their organizations had adopted a mobile-first marketing strategy. The share of marketing budgets spent on mobile has grown over the last few years, with 40 percent of surveyed marketers spending more than a quarter of their marketing budget on that channel most recently as compared to 10 percent in 2016. Additionally, two thirds were planning to increase their mobile budget in 2021. This means that the European mobile ad market is back on the growth track after being thrown off in 2020, when the market was impacted by the pandemic and 43 percent of marketers cut their mobile budgets. Audience. European mobile marketing professionals can count on an audience of approximately 664 million people – that is the number of mobile internet users in Europe. According to industry estimates, another 21 percent of the population live in areas where mobile broadband connections are available, without using them. Once the usage gap is closed, the potential mobile audience could therefore grow by one fifth in the future. Mobile penetration rates are highest in Denmark, Norway, and the United States, where they stand at 90 percent, and the lowest in Ukraine and Russia, where they fall below 60 percent. However, marketers will have to work a harder to make their ads attractive for European users as half of them never take action on mobile ads. That is the second-highest value in the world, after North America, where it stands at 66 percent. Largest markets. Europe is home to two of the five largest mobile advertising markets worldwide, the United Kingdom on place three and Germany, on place five. At approximately 14 billion euros, mobile advertising in the UK constitutes 56 percent of its digital ad expenditure. While this share is similar in Germany, the country’s total mobile ad spend adds up to less than half of the figure reported in the UK. Among the various mobile ad formats, both UK and German marketers invest most heavily in display ads (video and non-video). In the UK, the format accounts for nearly 40 percent of mobile ad budgets, whereas in Germany, the share stands at nearly 70 percent.

The possibility to access the internet on the go and the ever-growing number of hit mobile apps available have made mobile devices indispensable for users worldwide. The United Kingdom, whilst not being a mobile-first market, has seen high levels of mobile internet usage in recent years. In 2022, the UK was one of the countries reporting a high mobile internet penetration, ranking ahead the United States, Germany, and South Korea. In 2022, there were more than 63.2 million mobile internet users in the United Kingdom, which translates to approximately 93 percent share of the country’s population. The global coronavirus pandemic played a role in accelerating mobile usage trends, with UK users spending on average over four hours per day on their mobile devices in 2022. As a large part of that time included accessing internet-powered apps and browsing the web, the number of active mobile subscribers in the UK reached 97.2 million users in 2021, confirming the gradual but constant growth trend seen from 2007 onward. Connectivity and 5G planning. As of May 2022, around one-quarter of users in the United Kingdom reported having access to 5G mobile service, while the majority had a 4G service on their smartphones. However, infrastructural improvements and new projects that will allow UK users to access fast mobile internet are in the making: in 2025, the cumulative costs of deploying 5G enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) in the United Kingdom will reach almost 11 billion euros. It is projected that the share of 5G mobile connections in the UK will increase to almost 60 percent by 2025. Mobile demographics. As the UK population ages, an increase in tech-savvy mobile internet users is to be expected: as of March 2021, the digital population of the United Kingdom included approximately 10.6 million unique users on smartphones aged 55 or older. Additionally, smartphones were popular devices to access the net among teenagers and young adults: as of April 2022, young users were more likely to engage with smartphone devices for their daily internet activities than with computers or tablets. The smartphone usage rate was high among men and women alike: in December 2022, 97 percent of female internet users in the UK accessed the net via smartphones, while 96 percent of male users did the same. Mobile apps and social media. As of August 2022, texting and taking photos were the most popular activities smartphone users in the UK carried out weekly: over eight in 10 of the country’s digital population used their mobile to text, while over seven in 10 respondents reported taking photos weekly. According to an October 2022 survey conducted among Gen Z users, activities that kept mobile users connected and entertained appeared to occupy a special spot in their day-to-day life: using social media was indicated as a regular activity by approximately 80 percent of respondents while using a music streaming service and watching YouTube videos were claimed by 72 percent and 65 percent of respondents. With the great majority of all active internet users in the UK being also social media users, it does not come as a surprise that mobile-first social apps like Snapchat and TikTok have experienced great popularity among users in the country. In September 2022, TikTok generated around 300 thousand downloads from the Google Play Store, as well as 370 thousand downloads from iPhone users in the country. Despite its overwhelming popularity, the UK public harbors a lack of trust towards the Chinese-developed social video platform: according to a February 2023 survey, over half of UK respondents would like to see the Government ban TikTok from staff devices, while only 20 percent were reportedly against the measure.

In the constantly evolving digital landscape, mobile internet has acquired strategic importance. The availability and speed of mobile internet has come to define a global regions’ competitiveness in the market, with the 5G race interesting virtually all countries worldwide. In recent years, the share of people in Europe who have been accessing the internet via mobile devices has experienced a constant increase, going from 70 percent of the total population in 2019 to more than 80 percent in 2022. As of 2022, Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom, ranked as the countries with the highest mobile internet penetration rate in Europe, with over 90 percent of their population using mobile devices to navigate the internet. Mobile internet usage in the region has been favored by the implementation of consumer-friendly policies like the elimination of extra roaming charges across the EU, as well as considerable investments to improve mobile connectivity networks. 5G mobile connections are still expected to account for almost 90 percent of mobile connections in Europe in 2030, the costs for 5G enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) deployments in the region was of around 60 billion euros in 2022. Mobile internet users in numbers. Mobile internet users in Central and Western Europe were estimated to reach over 290 million by the end of 2023, an increase of 10 percent compared to the 261 million users the region was registering in 2019. By comparison, the number of mobile internet users in Southern Europe is expected to increase by 21 percent in the same period. Mobile internet in Northern Europe is expected to reach 93 percent of the region’s population in 2028, as mobile internet users in the region are forecasted to increase by roughly 10 percent points between 2019 and 2028. In the same period, Eastern Europe is projected to have the fastest-growing mobile digital population, going from 197 million to 217 million mobile internet users. Mobile activities and smartphone usage. The possibility to access communication and social interactions on the go is one of the key features of having access to mobile internet. Engagement levels on mobile social apps in Europe experienced a sudden increase between 2019 and 2020, as a secondary consequence of the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the slowly normalizing global conditions, 28 percent of European users reported spending between 30 minutes and one hour daily on social media apps in 2022. The mobile app consumer spending in Europe reached over 19 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, with over 11 billion U.S. dollars generated from the Apple App Store. Travel apps, which were among the categories that experienced a decrease in usage during the COVID19 pandemic, are in recovery. During the second quarter of 2022, mobile users in Europe downloaded approximately 107 million travel apps, down from the 120 million t ravel apps downloaded during the third quarter of 2021, when the summer months revived European users' thirst to travel despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over half our time online is spent on mobile phones. Adding wireless connections to our portable devices has shaped the modern digital environment for both hardware and software, while helping digitalization in emerging markets. In mid-2024, it was estimated that over 96 percent of the global digital population used a mobile device to connect to the internet. Mobile usage trends worldwide. During the second quarter of 2024, global users spent almost 60 percent of their online time browsing the web from their mobile phones. The mobile revolution continues to transform internet usage behavior: according to a survey of global smartphone users, watching videos was the most popular mobile activity, followed by reading the news, and online shopping. The change in download trends highlights how consumers’ preferences are shifting their mobile activities: tool apps and functional programs available on mobile have attracted a larger number of downloads in 2024 than in the previous year. Compared to the previous year, downloads of generative AI mobile apps doubled due to the novelty of the category and its popularity, while tool apps for file management experienced a 24 percent increase in 2024. Mobile-first consumer markets. Today, mobile traffic accounts for 62.5 percent of the global internet web traffic, while in mobile-first markets such as Asia and Africa, mobiles account for an even larger share of webpage views. Thanks to smartphones’ widespread commercial availability, developing global markets experienced access to the internet via mobile devices first. In the Asia-Pacific region, the growth of the mobile industries brought the number of mobile internet users to almost 1.1 billion in China and 1.05 billion mobile phone internet users in India in 2024. Mobile internet global growth. Despite being a fraction of the cost of a laptop or desktop computer, internet-powered mobiles can do almost as much as larger devices. Mobile broadband connections power our portable devices and fuel the digital economy, so much so that as of 2024, the entire digital world was connected via mobile phones. Mobiles represented the first connection point for users in developing markets, increasing levels of digitalization around the world. Mobile devices will continue influencing consumption trends in the post-pandemic economy, with the advancements in 5G and 6G technologies driving internet growth.

Israel is known worldwide for its technological expertise, including having high-level internet service. Internet usage is widely prevalent in Israel in all areas of life, and the quality of Internet services is vital to the Israeli public. According to the Digital Quality of Life index published in 2022, Israel obtained the highest score of all countries- 0.76 out of 1. This ranking examines a few digital features in each country, including the quality and affordability of Internet services. Estimates showed that the number of internet users in Israel will rise to 9.66 million in 2028, an increase of more than one million users compared to 2023. Increased mobile internet use. Since the use of smartphones is widespread, Israelis naturally surf the internet more frequently on mobile internet networks. According to the projections, the n number of mobile internet users in the country will reach 8.76 million in 2028. Both in the business and government sectors, there is a lot of investment in creating mobile-friendly websites convenient for surfing smartphones. In November 2022, the share of web pages served to web browsers on mobile devices in Israel stood at 58 percent. This share gradually increased since 2012. Internet usage characteristics. Israelis use the internet for a wide variety of needs. According to a survey conducted in 2022, finding information and researching how to do things constituted the main reasons for internet use in Israel. In addition, many people use the internet to read the daily news and watch TV shows and movies. Due to the central place that the internet occupies in life these days, people spend much time surfing the internet. A study found that in the third quarter of 2022, Israelis spent approximately 7 hours a day surfing the internet. This time was mainly spent watching content on streaming services like Netflix and Disney Plus and using social networks such as Instagram and TikTok. Online crime is a major problem. Despite the various advantages of using the internet, there are, of course, dangers. Online crime is the most significant hazard. In 2021, an Israeli survey found that online crime constituted Israel's most common type of crime that year. 6.5 percent of the respondents were victims of cybercrime. There were various common cybercrimes in Israel in 2021, especially information or identity theft. Israel is known as a worldwide expert country in cybersecurity, and famous companies in this field, such as Checkpoint, are Israeli firms or have Israeli founders.

With the seventh-largest internet audience in Europe, Spain has a long-established online presence, amassing over 42.5 million users in 2023. With over 90 percent of its population provided with accessible and affordable internet services, the country’s online market offers a highly engaging and profitable outlook for users and digital platforms. Sectors like social media and e-commerce flourish, reinforced by Spain’s heated influencer market, generating billion-dollar profits from advertising and social commerce activities. Nonetheless, the success of the intersection between social and shopping platforms is proof of the country’s position as one of the most desirable and lucrative Spanish-speaking internet markets globally. Internet for (virtually) all. Spain’s online sphere is likely to be at its peak, with the number of users projected to stabilize at over 46 million users after 2027. With an impressive internet penetration rate, the country’s biggest populational centers are its most connected provinces, despite the quality of access remaining lower within rural areas. Although more than half of Spain’s web traffic comes from mobile devices, broadband connections remain important, especially considering the increase in remote work in Spain after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. More than 87 percent of Spain’s online population uses the internet daily, with five hours and 42 minutes of average daily usage balanced across desktop and mobile devices. The accessibility of the web with minimal barriers means that the online behaviors of the Spanish population directly impact the country's digital industries, with extensive usage of social, video, and online shopping platforms propelling these solutions to the front of Spain’s digital landscape. Social media’s hotspot in the Mediterranean. Enabled by the extension of Spain’s online landscape, social platforms reach over 91 percent of the country’s population, creating a fruitful social media environment. Messaging apps are the country's most widely used online service, with WhatsApp leading the local social network market. Used by almost 90 percent of the country's online audiences, it holds the highest usage rate and is the favorite platform among national audiences. Additionally, content-based platforms enjoy Spain’s dynamic and tourism-focused influencer market. Despite the growing popularity of TikTok and the eventual appearance of some local alternatives, no competitor has yet surpassed Meta's dominance. With the highest number of users among all solutions, Facebook and Instagram solidify Meta’s footprint in the Iberian Peninsula, expanding their influence over social interaction platforms and crossing into the country’s digital economy. The face of the Spanish digital economy. With over 40 percent of its population shopping online, Spain has a thriving e-commerce industry that stands among Europe’s largest and most lucrative markets. By the end of 2023, the local sector had generated over 31.5 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenue, accounting for more than five percent of the country’s GDP. Major e-commerce players compete for the top spot in the Spanish market, with Amazon’s local domain being the most popular shopping website in the country. Social platforms recognize this potential and strive integrate into Spain’s online shopping experience. In the same year, social commerce revenues in Spain verged over one billion U.S. dollars, as platforms like Instagram and Facebook battle against YouTube strive to profit the most in the Mediterranean country. Overall, this symbiosis and competition among major platforms are ultimately proof of the health of Spain’s internet market. Despite the limited prospects for explosive future growth, the current opportunities it offers for businesses and profits over the habits of Spanish users are evidence of the country’s status as a secure and reliable choice for digital platforms.

Remote work. Telecommuting. Working from home or its acronymized version WFH. Many are the terms that have been coined to describe this working format that emerged in the modern era, but only took center stage during 2020 with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. The presence of the World Wide Web in practically all economically developed regions and the high number of professionals involved in service activities across the globe constituted the ideal setup to allow many to work from their homes. From rare to daily Before the sharp surge of telecommuting in 2020, teleworking was, however, an asset that only a lucky few could enjoy. 2019 registered very low rates of people working from home in Europe, with Germany and Italy, for example, recording figures of 12.6 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Spain registered low rates as well, with only about 8.3 percent of its labor force working from home. By March 2020, this situation changed very drastically with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, Spain experienced a substantial increase in the population that worked from home due to a series of restrictions implemented by the Spanish government. In an attempt to curb the high number of infections in the country, these measures included a home lockdown that eliminated all non-essential activities outside the home. As a result of this, nearly two million Spaniards worked from home regularly throughout 2020, which was twice the figure of approximately 951,800 that had been registered the previous year. In 2022, this figured dropped to over 1.3 million. Who are the remote workers of Spain? Whether or not a person can work from home depends highly on their level of education, age, and other demographic factors. In Spain, the latest studies point to greater odds of telecommuting for the people that had completed higher education degrees. More than 27 percent of those with a tertiary education could work from home, compared to just 7.4 percent of those with a secondary education. In 2022, the two age groups most likely to work remotely in the Iberian country were those between the ages of 35 and 54, with nearly 14 percent of professionals working from home that year. Location is also a factor, as the Community of Madrid and Catalonia recorded the highest shares of teleworkers in 2022, with shares of 13.2 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively. Remote working has several benefits for employees. 71 percent of Spanish employees say that remote working saves them time and 64 percent say it saves them money. However, there are also disadvantages, such as an increase in expenses not covered by the company, cited by 34 percent, and emotional detachment from the company and co-workers. With a clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages, the hybrid work system is the preferred choice of Spaniards in 2023.

While Japan’s working-age population has been shrinking for decades, the number of people in the labor force has been on the rise due to the increased labor market participation of women and older people. Despite the labor force’s expansion and a rising number of foreign workers, Japanese businesses are struggling with a severe labor shortage that has led to record wage increases in the past years. Japan’s labor market has traditionally been defined by distinct features such as life-long employment and seniority-based compensation that are thought to hinder the competitiveness of Japanese companies and job mobility.  Status of employment in Japan. Japan’s labor force rose to a record high of around 70 million in 2025, which can be attributed to a growing number of women and senior adults joining the labor force. The employment rate stood at 62.2 percent, and the unemployment rate declined to 2.45 percent, the lowest in decades. The comparatively low unemployment rate is mainly due to a general labor shortage as a direct consequence of Japan’s super-aged demographic and shrinking working-age population. This shortage, in turn, has supported record wage rises in the past years. Average wages of full-time workers in Japan rose by 3.1 percent in 2025, and the first round of “Shuntō” spring wage negotiations between trade unions and management indicated a similar trend for 2025. Characteristics of Japan’s labor market and proposed reforms. Japan’s labor market is known for a set of traditional employment practices that emerged during the post-war period of rapid economic growth, when it served the needs of workers and employers alike. These include seniority-based compensation (“Nenkō joretsu”), lifetime employment (“Shūshin koyō”), a membership-based recruitment and employment system, and the simultaneous recruitment of new graduates (“Shinsotsu-ikkatsu-saiyō”). Another common feature of the Japanese labor market is the dualism between regular and non-regular employment in a system that favors standard permanent employment. Although some of these practices have eroded over time, they are still present and have an impact on the flexibility of Japan’s labor market. In 2023, former Prime Minister Kishida proposed a "three-pronged set of labor market reforms" as part of a set of policies envisioning a new form of capitalism. The proposal included three pillars: promoting workers’ reskilling, facilitating and removing barriers to labor market mobility, and introducing job-based pay. The policies aim to use the skills of the workforce more efficiently and incentivize job changes to address the chronic labor shortage experienced by businesses, which is likely to intensify as the population continues to age and shrink.

Spain charges into the European gaming arena like a raging bull, generating over 1.43 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenue and making its mark as the sixth-biggest gaming market in Europe. With an audience of approximately 15.5 million users, the country boasts one of the highest gaming penetration rates among European markets. Much of Spain’s gaming power comes from its robust gaming industry, which generated over 1.3 billion euros in annual revenue. Powered by profitable retail and its robust production sector, the local mobile gaming and eSports segments manage to thrive, reinforcing Spain’s position among the region’s most strategic gaming markets. Casual, mobile, and digital-oriented. Gaming is a popular leisure and relaxing activity for many Spanish players, and mobile gaming comes as a perfect fit for locals. On average, Spanish gamers spend about 7.7 hours per week playing video games on all platforms, slightly less when compared to players from other European markets. Additionally, smartphones are the most popular gaming device in the country, with around 32 percent of Spanish gaming audiences playing on their phones. Due to the country’s high gaming penetration, the preference for mobile devices amassed over 11 million users for this category in the country, most of whom played downloaded games or apps. Aside of mobile gaming’s dominance, online sales confirm that the compass of Spanish gamers is pointed towards the digital. Despite the good performance of other platforms and a relative balance between physical and online profits, downloads and software purchases made the most of the gaming sales in Spain, accounting for over 56 percent of the country’s total sold gaming goods. In fact, a fourth of Spanish respondents claimed to buy game downloads, while another 16 percent performed in-game purchases. Spain’s own Strength and resilience. Partly behind Spain’s successful gaming market is the country’s solid national gaming industry, which generated over 1.38 billion euros in annual revenues in 2022. In the same year, employment in the Spanish gaming industry grew over 4.8 percent, with 790 active studios employing over 9,261 people. Additionally, half of Spain’s gaming studios are in Spain’s biggest population centers, with most of these enterprises devoted to the development of intellectual property (IP) and auto-publishing as their main activities. Spain’s strong gaming commerce and industry also allowed its local eSports scene to thrive. Despite a decrease in the number of local professional players in the last two years, the sector generated over 118.27 million U.S. dollars of revenue in 2023, and another 3 million euros in annual eSports advertising revenues. Overall, the success of Spanish gaming efforts is further evidence that despite not having the largest or most engaged market among its peers, a solid landscape and consistent casual consumption make it worth to consider Spain’s position in the European gaming landscape.

From a niche hobby to a global phenomenon, the eSports market has experienced a meteoric rise in the last few years. In 2022, France had the sixth largest eSports market worldwide, ranking just below the United Kingdom. According to a Statista Market Insight, the northwestern European country had an estimated 9.7 million eSports users as of 2022. The reach of video games in France was highlighted in a survey in the same year, which found that 94 percent of teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17 years old played video games in the country. Overall, the best-selling video game in France based on sales of physical units was FIFA 23, a title published by gaming industry heavyweights Electronic Arts. Who consumes eSports in France? Millions of individuals engage in eSports consumption in France annually. As of July 2022, a breakdown of the distribution of eSports consumers and players in the region showed that there were nearly twice as many people who only watched eSports compared to those that were spectators as well as players. An online survey of French internet users found that about 3.3 million individuals watched eSports at least once a week in France. The same survey arrived at the conclusion that arcade racing was the most popular video game genre among internet users in France in 2022, while Fortnite Battle Royale was the most watched eSports title in France that year. Professional eSports players. In 2022, France was among the top five countries ranked by the number of active players in eSports competitions worldwide. Evan Rogez, who competed under the alias of M0nkey M00n, was the leading professional gamer in France based on earnings made in 2022. Ranking French eSports players by their lifetime earnings, however, revealed Sébastien Debs, also known as Ceb, as the most successful eSports player in the country. Overall, French eSports gamers had won a cumulative total of a little over five million U.S. dollars in 2022, ranking them above Canada when it came to the total prize money won by eSports players from different countries. Twitch in France. Twitch is a live streaming platform which provides gaming video content (GVC), among other forms of online entertainment. As of 2023, ZeratoR was the most watched French-language Twitch streaming channel, clocking a cumulative total of nearly five million viewership hours. Meanwhile, Squeezie was the most popular French-language Twitch streamer based on the number of followers recorded in 2023. Looking at the regional distribution of desktop traffic to Twitch.tv, France accounted for just over four percent of global traffic as of 2023.

The Maghreb region is located in the northern part of Africa and comprises the western Arab World, i.e. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and the disputed territory of Western Sahara. It does not include the countries of Egypt or Sudan, which are also part of Northern Africa and the Arab World, but are considered part of the Mashriq with the Arabian Peninsula. Today, the population of these 5 countries amounts to over 100 million people. Due to the region's geographical and environmental conditions, the vast majority of its population lives in metropolitan areas along the coast. Economic development. Political cooperation within the Maghreb is most effectively achieved through the Arab League, and to a lesser extent the African Union. In 1989, the Arab Maghreb Union was established to promote cooperation between member states and economic integration in a common market, but it has had little tangible effects due to political infighting. The Great Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA), which includes all Maghreb states except Mauritania, has been effective in facilitating free movement of industrial and agricultural commodities between its members. Additionally, European Union included the same Maghreb states in the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, which decreases barriers to trade, services, and investment with the EU. Given the large growth potential in the Maghreb market many experts suggest that the countries should focus on intra-regional trade. However, the trade volumes in the region remain fairly low - given recent instability in Libya, this is unlikely to see any change, however growing cooperation between the EU (especially Italy and Spain) and the other Maghreb states could lead to regional growth. Living standards. A focus of each member’s government is to increase GDP by providing more employment opportunities, encouraging local and foreign investment, and reducing illiteracy. The countries with the highest GDP in the Maghreb region are Algeria and Morocco. With the exception of Morocco, the inflation rate in the rest of the Maghreb region is quite high, especially in Libya, which is battling a still ongoing crisis, as social and political instability led to the Libyan Civil War. This conflict, caused by the internationally-backed outster of Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, has essentially left Libya with two warring governments, respectively seated in Tripoli and Benghazi. The United Nations recognizes the former, while Libya’s oil resources are located in the Benghazi region. The integration of the Maghreb region in the world’s financial and technical sectors is a time consuming process, but full of potential. In particular, the conciliatory tone displayed by Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, could unite the region. As political tensions defuse, the economic capacity of the region can begin to be realized.

The accounting industry in the United States has proven itself to be a highly profitable and indispensable line of business, where number crunching has become a way of deciphering the language of business and unlocking the secrets to financial growth. The revenue of the accounting services industry in the United States has grown exponentially since 2013 and reached 145.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. The leading accounting firms in the U.S. by revenue have consistently been the Big Four global accounting and auditing firms in Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY), and KPMG. High wages, high employee retention. Since 2020, the number of accountants and auditors employed in the U.S. has increased annually, reaching a record high in 2025. The number of bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks employed in the U.S. has fluctuated only slightly over the same period. California has consistently been the state with the highest employment level in accounting and auditing, whereas the District of Columbia now offers the highest wages for accountants and auditors nationwide. With these high retention rates and high wages, the accounting industry in the United States must be seen as an attractive economy. The Big Four's grip tightens as cost pressures ease. The accounting landscape in the United States remains firmly led by the Big Four. Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG together generated a combined U.S. revenue of the Big Four accounting firms of nearly 96 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, with Deloitte comfortably in the lead. Pricing pressure has eased somewhat for the industry's clients too, as the annual inflation rate in the United States cooled to 2.6 percent in 2025 after peaking above 8 percent in 2022, though labor and compliance costs remain a persistent challenge for smaller competitors. Despite these pressures, demand for professional expertise shows no sign of slowing, as the average annual expenditure on accounting fees per consumer unit in the United States also reached a record high in 2024, underscoring the industry's lasting resilience.

China is not only the world's largest cigarette market but also its biggest tobacco grower, with national tobacco acreage still covering more than a million hectares despite years of decline. Tobacco production volumes have followed a similar downward path, even though output remains enormous by global standards. From farmland to factory floor, the crop feeds a vast domestic supply chain that stretches into international trade and underpins one of the world's heaviest cigarette markets. A Shrinking Harvest, Still Concentrated in Yunnan. Tobacco cultivation in China has contracted steadily since its peak just over a decade ago, with farmland now concentrated in a handful of growing regions. Yunnan remains by far the country's leading tobacco-growing province, thanks to its favorable climate and soil, supplying by far the largest share of the harvest, followed by Guizhou, Hunan and Sichuan. Even as farmland shrinks, Chinese tobacco fields have become more productive, with tobacco yield now exceeding two tonnes per hectare. One Company, One Market: China Tobacco's Grip. To facilitate centralized administration of the tobacco industry, the Chinese government established the China National Tobacco Corporation ("China Tobacco") in 1981, granting it a legal monopoly on the manufacture and sale of tobacco products in the country. Over the years, China Tobacco has grown into a global major player, supplying over 40 percent of the world's cigarettes. Today, it operates thousands of branches across China, offering a wide range of tobacco products through various brands, with Chunghwa being the most prominent tobacco brand in 2025. From Farm to Foreign Market: China's Tobacco Trade. Despite China Tobacco's dominance at home, the country is both an importer and exporter of tobacco. On the import side, China sourced tobacco and tobacco products worth several billion dollars in 2025, with Zimbabwe its single largest supplier. On the export side, China shipped out an even larger total, worth roughly ten billion dollars that year, with the United States emerging as its top destination for tobacco product exports. A Market Still Built on Cigarettes. On the consumption side, the Chinese market remains enormous: the volume of cigarettes sold domestically reached an estimated 2.42 trillion pieces in 2025, more than any other country in the world. Measured per person, average cigarette consumption also remains high, underscoring how deeply embedded smoking still is in everyday life even as health campaigns intensify. Taken together, these figures show an industry caught between a shrinking farm base, an expanding trade footprint, and a domestic market that, for now, keeps demanding cigarettes in enormous volumes.

From narcotic legacies to coffee production and mainstream music, Colombia presents itself as a culturally rich country with a complex past. Located in Northern South America, it is one of the largest countries in the world and the fourth-largest economy in Latin America. Demographic outlook. Colombia’s population stands at almost 53 million people, with projections suggesting an increase of almost two million by 2031. Urbanization continues apace, with cities like Bogotá, the country’s capital and home to nearly eight million residents, and Medellín absorbing this growth. Despite this steady growth, Colombia faces demographic challenges. The fertility rate has been declining, while the average life expectancy dipped slightly during the COVID-19 pandemic; nonetheless, by 2024, the life expectancy reached and exceeded pre-pandemic levels.  Economy and international trade. The Colombian economy has displayed resilience, though not without setbacks. After a downturn in 2015 and 2016, and a sharp contraction in 2020, gross domestic product (GDP) growth surged again and stayed positive between 2022 and 2025. These fluctuations are  mirrored in GDP per capita, which hit multi-year lows before rebounding. Contributing to over half of Colombia’s GDP, the service sector presented itself as the main economic sector, followed by the industry. Agriculture, while culturally significant, accounts for less than 10 percent. While the economy expanded, structural issues persisted. Colombia's  unemployment rate remains high, despite having peaked in 2020 and returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2023. Unemployment affects particularly the young Colombians, with more than 17 percent of them unemployed in 2025. However, the informal employment market in the country is considerable, accounting for approximately 56 percent of all employment in Colombia. Regarding trade, the South American country has presented a negative trade balance for the last decade. In 2025, Colombia imported goods worth more than 70,5 billion U.S. dollars, while exporting goods worth slightly over 50 billion U.S. dollars in the same year. Drug-related crime. Colombia continues to grapple with the legacy of its role in the global drug trade. Although coca cultivation dropped in some regions due to peace accords and eradication programs, the country remains the world’s largest producer of cocaine. Drug trafficking organizations have adapted to these changes, and the amount of land used for illicit cultivation of coca has risen every year. Colombia’s economy is rebounding, its cities are growing, and its people are increasingly urban. However, challenges persist. In 2025, Colombia was the most unequal country in Latin America regarding income distribution. Adding this to the ongoing struggle against narco-trafficking, the trajectory of this South American powerhouse will depend not only on macroeconomic performance, but also on social cohesion and institutional reform.

Few brands carry as distinct a reputation as Volkswagen: utilitarian, affordable, and reliable are qualities long associated with the name. The 2015 diesel-emissions scandal damaged that standing, but build quality has mostly remained a strength. However, the brand of Volkswagen is only one marque within a far larger conglomerate, the Volkswagen Group, including luxury brands such as Porsche and Audi alongside lower-cost manufacturers like Škoda and SEAT/CUPRA. The group's  worldwide vehicle deliveries reached 9.02 million in 2025, a slight decrease from 9.03 million in 2024, and it ranked second among the world's leading carmakers, trailing Toyota by around 1.8 million sales. Profitability under pressure. Financial results mirror the slowdown in deliveries. In 2025, the Group's revenue reached 321.91 billion euros, down from 324.66 billion euros a year earlier. Operating profit fell far more sharply, from 19.06 billion euros in 2024 to 8.87 billion euros in 2025, its lowest level since 2020. Despite this profitability squeeze, the Group's research and development spending decreased only slightly, from 21.03 billion euros in 2024 to 19.41 billion euros in 2025, likely reflecting the catch-up Volkswagen and other western carmakers must play in developing electric vehicles to rival affordable, high-performing models from China. Electric vehicles gain ground, unevenly across brands. The success of Chinese EV manufacturers such as BYD has reshaped the global automobile market share by brand, but regulatory pressure is also driving Volkswagen's push for a wider EV lineup, including EU rules on emissions limits and charging infrastructure. Volkswagen's EV production picked up significantly in 2025, with electric models making up around 11 percent of total deliveries, up from 8.2 percent in 2024. In 2024, the brand producing the most EVs was the Group's namesake marque, accounting for 51.42 percent of the Group's electric deliveries, but by 2025 its share had declined markedly as Audi and Škoda significantly increased their own EV output. Europe's weight, and a workforce in retreat. Looking at the Group's regional revenue split, the combined "Europe and remaining markets" segment accounted for over 60 percent of total revenue in 2025, far ahead of Asia-Pacific, North America, and South America individually. In step with the decline in revenue and operating profit, the company's headcount fell steadily too, from around 676,000 employees in 2023 to roughly 602,000 in 2025. Volkswagen confirmed in September 2026 that it would cut a further 100,000 jobs and close four German plants, including sites for the Volkswagen and Audi brands, a restructuring set to reshape the Group's identity in the years ahead.

In 2024, the world population had already surpassed eight billion people and is  expected to reach ten billion within 2060. The world's total population has increased rapidly over the past century as new medical developments and growing standards of living have slowed infant mortality and led to people living longer than before. Indeed, the current global life expectancy is 73.3 years, even if there are significant differences between countries. Births and deaths. Over the past ten years, the global fertility rate decreased, even in the least-developed and low-income countries, where the highest fertility rates worldwide are found. As a high number of low-income countries are found in Africa, it is not surprising that countries in West and Central Africa have the highest adolescent fertility rate worldwide, which is the number of children born per 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19 years old. While the highest fertility rates are found in African countries, the highest death rates are found in Eastern European countries. One reason behind this is the high number of COVID-19-related deaths in these countries during the pandemic, where a combination of an old population, low vaccination rates, and poor enforcement of policies aimed at curbing the outbreak led to high death tolls. In 2024, eight out of ten countries with the highest death rate worldwide were in Eastern Europe.  Urbanization: more and more people live in urban areas. Together with an increasing population, the last decades have seen a surge in the number of people living in cities and urban areas. This is related to a change in productivity means, meaning that fewer people are needed within traditional agriculture and more jobs are in urban areas. However, there are significant differences between the continents, with over 80 percent of the population in North America living in urban areas in 2020, compared to just above 40 percent of the African population. On the other hand, the share of the world's population living in rural areas decreased steadily over the past 30 years, dropping to less than 43 percent as of 2025.  African population growth projections. Most of the world's population lives in Asia, with India and China being the world's most populous countries, accounting for over 2.8 billion of the planet's total population. However, the highest population increase over the next decades is expected to happen in Africa, where 40 percent of the population is below 15 years old and where the highest birth rates in the world are found.

From Ford to Route 66, automobiles are intrinsic to the United States' history and identity. As the dominant form of transport, 72 percent of Americans reported having access to their own car as of September 2025, with an additional 18 percent using a company car or family vehicle. The car industry is also a major part of the U.S. economy, employing over three million people across manufacturing and dealerships and generating nearly 1.59 trillion U.S. dollars in revenue from road vehicle and parts retail trade in 2024. A market rooted in light trucks and domestic brands. When looking at the most sold vehicle types in the U.S., light trucks have consistently been the most popular in recent years. In fact, light truck sales typically make up around 80 percent of total vehicle sales, while the monthly volume of vehicles sold in the U.S. usually totaled between one and 1.5 million units from January 2022 to August 2025. Meanwhile, when it comes to the leading automotive manufacturers by market share in the U.S., a handful of domestic companies perform exceptionally well. In 2024, General Motors (GM) and Ford had the first and third highest market share in the U.S. auto industry, respectively, while Asian powerhouses Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda also ranked in the top five. That said, over 60 percent of  light vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2024 were still domestically produced, with companies like Toyota having multiple stateside manufacturing plants. Geopolitics, gas prices, and electric vehicles. After dipping below three dollars per gallon in late 2025, average U.S. gasoline and diesel prices surged by spring 2026, with regular gas topping four U.S. dollars and diesel climbing above five U.S. dollars. Underpinning this was the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which has thrown the global oil industry into disarray. The vehicle market itself is also shifting:  the market share of battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rose steeply from 2021 to 2025. However, with the end of tax credits from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for buyers of electric vehicles (EVs) in September 2025, the EV market has since contracted. Despite this, leading U.S. auto manufacturers such as GM continue to invest heavily in battery cell manufacturing domestically. Tariffs and production pressures on the horizon. As of March 2026, Section 232 tariffs continued to impose a 25 percent duty on automobiles and auto parts entering the United States, raising costs across the supply chain. Despite these challenges, total U.S. vehicle sales still reached roughly 16.7 million units in 2025, up from the prior year. While USMCA duty exceptions for parts from Mexico and Canada have eased some pressure, 2025 sales growth may partly reflect consumers buying early to avoid higher prices. Whether automakers can absorb rising import costs while sustaining sales momentum will be a defining question for the industry heading into 2027.

Child abuse comes in several different forms, including physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological abuse. Common signs of child abuse include unexplained bruises, overly aggressive behavior, lack of necessities, and drastic changes in behavioral and eating habits. Unfortunately, child abuse remains prevalent throughout the world, including in the United States. In 2024, there were 532,228 reported cases of child abuse in the U.S., with the most common form of maltreatment being neglect, followed by physical abuse, multiple maltreatments, and sexual abuse. The demographics of child abuse. Although child abuse happens across all races and genders, studies have shown that American Indian or Alaska Native children and Black or African American children had the highest rates of child abuse in the United States in 2024, respectively. More girls were also abused than boys in that year; however, boys were more likely to die as a result of abuse or maltreatment. Young children make up the majority of child abuse cases in  the U.S., with the most common age of abuse victims being two to five years old. Most child fatalities from abuse are also among children less than one year old. The number of child fatalities due to abuse or maltreatment has remained relatively steady since 2007, and in 2024, there were 1,773 deaths from child abuse or maltreatment and about 4.84 children who died each day as a result of abuse and neglect. A victim may be abused multiple times by the same perpetrator or a combination of them. Most child abuse victims in the U.S. were abused by their mothers, fathers, or a combination of both. Children may also be at greater risk of child abuse if their caregivers abuse drugs or alcohol. Child Protective Services. Child Protective Services (CPS) is a governmental agency in the United States that takes care of child abuse cases. Child protective services vary from state to state, but they maintain the responsibility to respond to child abuse cases accordingly. CPS determines the legitimacy of the accusations and supplies resources for the affected children to protect them. If children are deemed unsafe in their homes as a result of abuse from their parents or guardians, the children will be consequently removed to keep them safe. Utah had the highest number of completed reports per investigation and alternative response worker in 2023, with 174 cases. However, Massachusetts was the state with the shortest period of time between reporting child abuse and the initiation of services in that year, with an average of 12 days.

Passenger airlines are cruising at record altitude. In 2025, global airline revenue was estimated to top one trillion U.S. dollars, well clear of pre-pandemic highs, while scheduled passenger numbers climbed past 2019 levels too, reaching 4.98 billion passengers. Looking ahead, passenger traffic is set to keep climbing worldwide, led by fast-growing markets in South and Southeast Asia. Carriers operate under different models: mainline networks serve central hubs, regional airlines cover shorter routes,  low-cost carriers keep things basic, and charter airlines fly outside regular schedules. Major airlines are generally defined as those generating at least one billion U.S. dollars in annual revenue. Delta leads on value and brand, but rivals crowd the top. Delta Air Lines was the most valuable airline in the world as of April 2025, with a market valuation of 27.2 billion U.S. dollars. The Atlanta-based carrier also led the industry in brand value, followed by fellow U.S. giants United Airlines and American Airlines in the top three. Leading international players such as British Airways, Emirates, and China Southern Airlines also ranked among the global top ten by brand value. Delta's dominance was further underscored by its main hub, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which remained the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic in 2025. Punctuality and passenger loyalty tell a different story. Brand power does not always translate into the best service. Worldwide, Aeromexico claimed the punctuality crown in 2025, while Delta recorded the strongest on-time performance in North America, at 80.9 percent. Although U.S. carriers maintain a strong financial and brand presence, carriers from the Middle East and Asia continue to dominate passenger satisfaction rankings, with Qatar Airways taking the top spot ahead of Emirates, and nine of the top ten most consumer-friendly carriers based in that region. The split suggests brand strength and passenger experience do not always move together, leaving room for the biggest U.S. names to close the service gap. Shifting to sustainable aviation fuel. In 2022, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) agreed on a long-term goal of net-zero carbon emissions for aviation by 2050, cutting CO2 from flight operations and switching to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a commitment reaffirmed by its member states in 2025. SAF is expected to deliver the single largest share of the emissions cuts needed to hit that target, ahead of carbon offsetting and new aircraft technology. Since 2013, United Airlines has been the leading SAF purchaser by far, with an off-take volume topping 14 billion liters, some 10 billion liters ahead of runner-up Southwest Airlines. Industry leaders are scaling up climate action and strategic partnerships to meet rising expectations as the industry looks toward 2050.

Mexico is a large and populous country in North America, bordered by the U.S. to the north, and Belize and Guatemala to the south. Its capital, Mexico City, is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, and Mexico’s total population is now among the top 15 globally. Mexico has a rich history stretching back millennia, and it has a growing cultural influence across the world through its cuisine, arts, and holidays – it also has the largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. Mexico ranks among the top 15  largest economies in the world, with the fourth largest in the Americas after the U.S., Canada, and Brazil. However, it ranks much lower for GDP per capita, with discrepancies in income and investment by region, urbanity, and class. Other issues facing Mexico today include climate change, violence and organized crime, and political stability. Geography. Mexico has a diverse topography and a range of climates. Its northern border with the United States is one of the longest and busiest in the world. Much of the north is arid and covered by desert although its climate varies by season; in contrast, the south is much more tropical and covered by forest, and its climate remains fairly constant year-round. Mexico is very mountainous, with large ranges extending along the east and west of the country, as well as across the south - because of this, Mexico has an average elevation of more than 1,100 meters. Mexico’s position on the meeting point of three tectonic plates means it is one of the most seismically active regions on earth, especially along its west coast and in the south. The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt also stretches across the middle of the country from coast to coast, and Mexico is home to some of the tallest volcanoes on the planet. The Gulf of Mexico lies to the east and is a popular tourist destination, while the Gulf and east coast are also where most of Mexico’s oil reserves are found. However, both tourism and the oil industry are having a negative impact on the environment, with oil spills, air traffic, and land use change affecting all areas of the biosphere. Other threats from climate change include rising temperatures and changing weather patterns, which are detrimental to already-strained water supplies and food production. History. Humans have inhabited the region of Mexico for millennia, and the emergence of the Olmecs in the 2nd millennia BCE is considered one of humanity’s six “ cradles of civilization ”. Unlike most other regions of the Americas, pre-Columbian civilizations inhabiting Mexico developed extensive trade networks, advanced agriculture, political and societal hierarchies, networks of city states, and writing systems. The Aztecs, who ruled central Mexico from the 14th to 16th centuries, were the most powerful in Mexico at the time of European contact and their empire was centered around Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). However, conflict and the introduction of old-world diseases saw their population fall significantly, allowing the Spanish Empire to take control. The Spanish colonization of Mexico continued for another two centuries, and the natural resources extracted helped Spain become the world’s wealthiest empire by the late 1500s. Mexico was the colony of “ New Spain ” for three centuries, and was mostly inhabited by European settlers, natives, and African slaves - intermarriage between Europeans and natives was widespread, and this blending of cultures saw many indigenous customs become infused with the religion, language, and culture brought by the Spanish, which last to this day. Over time, the growing Mexican-born population began pushing for greater autonomy, before events on both sides of the Atlantic resulted in the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821), achieving sovereignty in 1821. A century of political instability, shrinking borders, and growing wealth inequality followed, which peaked in the Porfiriato (1876-1911), a period of dictatorial rule under Porfirio Diaz. This culminated in the Mexican Revolution: a long and bloody civil war between a variety of factions from all backgrounds, which resulted in over two million deaths but eventually established Mexico as a constitutional republic in 1920 and saw the widespread reforms and improvements in living conditions for the working class. The next two decades were tumultuous, before a period of consistent political stability and prosperity began in the 1940s, coinciding with the onset of Mexico’s demographic transition. This growth continued throughout the rest of the 20th century, and Mexico became a key economic and geopolitical player in the Americas, although economic and political crises were prevalent. Demographics. Mexico has a population exceeding 130 million people. Its birth rate is falling, but remains above the death rate, meaning that the population will continue to grow naturally in the coming years. Adding to its population growth, Mexico has historically had high rates of emigration to the U.S., however declining northward emigration and rising immigration from elsewhere in the Americas has seen Mexico’s net migration rate turn positive in some recent years. Looking forward, Mexico’s net migration will be highly subject to international factors such as U.S. border policy, security and stability in Latin America, and climate change, as well as domestic affairs. In terms of education, Mexico ranks poorly in comparison to other OECD countries, and its public systems struggle to cope during the Covid-19 pandemic, however investment in education has gradually increased in recent years. Economy. Mexico has the second largest economy in Latin America after Brazil and is a leading regional trading power in the western hemisphere. Through the USMCA trade agreement (previously NAFTA ), Mexico’s largest trading partners are the U.S. and Canada, and three-quarters of its exports go to the U.S. alone. Mexico’s export economy makes up a large share of its GDP, with vehicles, machinery, and petroleum as the most common products. Mexico’s workforce is ranked as the second hardest working in the OECD - over one third is employed in the primary or secondary sectors, which is much higher than any advanced economy, and this has changed very little in recent years. In the past decade, the largest challenges to Mexico’s economic stability have been corruption and cartel activities. Politics. Mexico is a federal republic, where power is split between the president, Congress, and Supreme Court, with similar systems implemented across each of the 32 states. The largest party in Mexico’s history was the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled from 1929 until 2000, however elections have become much more competitive in recent decades. Since 2018, a left-wing coalition has been in power, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as “AMLO”) of the MORENA Party. This administration has been praised for investing in socially progressive policies to reduce inequality but has been criticized for its handling of the pandemic and the rise in cartel violence. General elections are held every six years to determine the President, while federal elections are held every three years to determine the legislature – the general election of 2024, confirmed the popularity of MORENA winning the elections with almost 60 percent of the votes.

At times, it can be difficult to come up with an adequate present to give to another person, no matter whether it is Mother's Day or Christmas. As a result, it is not surprising just how popular gift cards have become, especially in the United States, where sales have reached an all-time high. Gift cards allow the gift recipient to decide what he or she wants to buy, which takes out the guesswork for the person looking for gifts. In 2025, gift cards were the product category with the highest planned holiday spending per person, underlining their central role in American gift-giving. From holidays to everyday occasions. How much the average U.S. consumer spends on gift cards can depend on a number of factors, including the occasion and the season. During the 2025 holiday season, for instance, Americans planned to spend an average of 241 U.S. dollars on gift cards per household. Gift cards aren't just for the holidays, though: per capita spending on Mother's Day gift cards reached a record high of roughly 27 U.S. dollars in 2026, with Father's Day following a similar upward trend. When it comes to the type of card, restaurants ranked as the most popular choice in 2025, followed by bank-issued and department store cards. From treat to necessity, and a persistent fraud problem. In 2025, gift cards were  among the  most popular gifts shoppers planned  to buy, second only to clothing and accessories. Many gift card recipients end up directing their balances toward everyday necessities rather than treating themselves. With inflation still ranking among the top concerns for consumers worldwide, this spending pattern is not surprising. Other categories where people planned to use their gift cards included clothing and jewelry, experiences, and electronic goods. It's clear that gift cards are here to stay, with many consumers both wanting to receive them as a gift as well as finding them a convenient option when giving a present to someone else. However, the amount of money lost due to gift card fraud reached roughly 212 million U.S. dollars in 2024, and retailers must continue developing safeguards to protect consumers from scams targeting gift card balances.

Over the years, it has become impossible to imagine a world in which one cannot make purchases online. In the United States, e-commerce has become so common that roughly 87 percent of the country's  consumers shop on the web. And these numbers are set to increase even further in the future: retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. are forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of about six percent through 2030. From domestic giants to cross-border carts. Consumers in the United States buy all kinds of products from a variety of retail platforms such as Amazon, Walmart, and eBay. Aside from these American e-commerce giants, foreign online stores are gaining relevance in the online shopping landscape in the country. In 2025, 43 percent of the latest online purchases from abroad among U.S. buyers were made in China, with platforms like Temu and Shein now ranking among the most popular online shops nationwide. What Americans buy and how they find it. Among the most popular categories for U.S. online shoppers were clothing, shoes, and food and beverages. Online food delivery keeps booming too, with DoorDash leading the pack over Uber Eats and Grubhub. Meanwhile, Amazon and Walmart serve as the top platforms for shopping inspiration and product research, outpacing traditional search engines and social media. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rise of Prime Day. When it comes to the busyness of the holiday season, many shoppers opt to buy their gifts online. In 2025, about 41 percent of holiday buyers intended to do most of their holiday shopping online, with Gen Z leading the way. Cyber Monday and Black Friday remain the biggest online shopping days, with Cyber Monday expected to reach 14.2 billion U.S. dollars in e-commerce revenue in 2025. Although it is not directly holiday-related, Prime Day has also grown into one of the main online shopping events in the U.S., reaching estimated sales of over 24 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Generative AI enters the shopping aisle. Generative AI is quietly reshaping how Americans shop online. For many consumers, the main appeal is practical: saving time and finding better deals. As these tools become more capable, they could play a bigger role in the future of U.S. e-commerce.

The United States has always been dominated by domestic online retailers, but now, two foreign companies are taking on the U.S. market: Temu and Shein. The growing e-commerce market generated over 1.15 trillion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2025 and is forecast to surpass 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030. In terms of product categories, electronics and fashion are the most popular online, as they have the highest share of online users. Amazon reigns, challengers gain ground. Amazon is by far the leading e-retailer in the United States. The marketplace holds roughly two-fifths of the online shopping market, whereas most of its competitors hold single-digit shares, with Walmart standing out at about nine percent. Amazon also significantly outperforms its U.S. competitors in terms of e-retail net sales, generating approximately 427 billion U.S. dollars via its online store in 2025, compared to Walmart at roughly 197 billion U.S. dollars. Other successful online stores include eBay, Shein, and Target. When downloads don't equal dollars. Shopping on smartphones is the most popular way to purchase items online in the United States, which is why shopping apps remain so important in the retail landscape. In mobile commerce, Amazon faces competition from Chinese shopping apps, which have attracted U.S. online shoppers, especially those looking for affordable options. In 2025, Temu remained the most downloaded shopping app in the country, with roughly 32 million downloads, though this marked a sharp decline from the prior year. Shein was also the most downloaded fashion and beauty app in the country, with over 21 million downloads. However, despite their popularity in terms of app downloads, Temu and Shein did not outperform the top local players in terms of e-commerce revenue that year. This suggests that while Chinese shopping apps may be popular among U.S. consumers for their low prices, they still face challenges in the highly competitive U.S. market. Consumer spending in the U.S. remains resilient, particularly in online shopping, with mobile commerce revenues alone expected to surpass 840 billion U.S. dollars by 2029. While home-grown marketplaces are unlikely to lose their top spots to Chinese competitors, especially in light of new tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, these newcomers are still worth keeping an eye on in the years to come.