Sorry for the quiet period here on the Alensa Blog, all our blogging is happening over on NextWidgets Blog. Recently we posted about gaining some perspective on the recent Facebook storefront hype, some newly released statistics on expandable ads and some bold predictions about social commerce.

We’ve received the video’s from Health 2.0 Paris 2010. The first one includes the panel discussion and the second is only the demo of the product.

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There’s a great feature thats just come out in the current print edition of Internet World Business magazine in Germany regarding our NextWidgets project and the upcoming collaboration with Publicis. Read the full article over on the NextWidgets blog.

A couple of new articles on the NextWidgets blog this week:

1. Advertising industry reaction to iAds - Apple this month launched a new advertising platform for iPhone and iPad which allows for interactive advertising units within applications that don’t take the user outside of the app. This is very interesting for us due to the similarity with how NextWidgets works and in this article look at how ‘madison avenue’ is reacting to iAds.

2. Brand advertising and purchase intent - A look at how brands measure performance statistics on advertising campaigns and what are the changes happening to these methodologies as ad dollars move into the online sphere.

Last Thursday we were featured on TechCrunch in connection with our presentation at Next10 conference and the announcement of our new Side-Tab Widgets. Here’s a demo page for this new product which allows any online publisher to install contextual on-site e-commerce functionality with a single embed code.
If you’re interested in the Side-Tab widgets for your website, please contact me on bizdev[at]nextwidgets.com

A lot has been happening since the launch of NextWidgets and the last few weeks have been extraordinary. We have had the opportunity to present NextWidgets at Health 2.0 in Paris followed by The Next Web in Amsterdam and at Next10 in Berlin over the last two days. Each conference was unique and opened a different scope of how NextWidgets transactional banners could be used. The interest from both publishers and merchants has been very positive and we now look forward to implementing the many ideas that have come up through the conversations.

We’ll post the videos of the events as they become available. The first one publishes is this short interview by yubby.com at The Next Web in relation to our participation as a finalist in the PayPal X Startup Rally:

Many thanks to everyone who stopped by our stands at The Next Web and Next10 to say hi !

The European pharmacy market is highly specific from country to country in terms of regulations concerning the establishment and ownership of pharmacies and pharmacy chains.

Here is our short analysis which demonstrates some of the stark differences in legislation and market structure:

United Kingdom : approx. 12300 pharmacies

Over 60% are owned by large chains which include :

Alliance Boots : the largest chain with 2500 pharmacies - approx 20% market share
Lloyds Pharmacy : 1600 pharmacies
Numark : 2000 pharmacies
Co-op Pharmacy : 800 pharmacies
Rowlands pharmacy : 500 pharmacies
Superdrug : 225
Asda & Sainsbury each have a couple hundred in-store pharmacies

Independent pharmacies make up approx 40% of the market but are being pressured out by the large chains so the number of independent pharmacies is expected to decrease by up to 18% by 2013
(Sources: Department of Health Statistics and SEMPORA Survey)

Norway : approx. 600 pharmacies
Pharmacy market liberalisation enacted in 2001 quickly led to horizontal integration and concentration of the market. Pharmacy groups integrated vertically with wholesalers so that by 2004, four pharmacy chains controlled 95% of the market.

Apotek 1 : 240 pharmacies, 40% market share
Vitusapotek : 140 pharmacies
Alliance Apotek : 140 pharmacies
Ditt Apotek : 80 pharmacies
33 state owned pharmacies

(Sources: Health Policy, Volume 75, Issue 1, Pages 9-17 and Wikipedia)

France : Over 20′000 pharmacies - all independently-owned by pharmacists.
By law, a pharmacist can possess up to three pharmacies maximum. French independent pharmacies user “regroupements” to join together for better collective purchasing and marketing.

Germany : Over 20′000 pharmacies - all independently-owned by pharmacists.
By law, a pharmacist can possess up to three pharmacies maximum.
Has been challenged by both the European Comission and international chains such as DocMorris as contrary are not compatible with the freedom of establishment, enshrined in Article 43 of the EC Treaty

Spain : approx. 20700 community pharmacies - no chains allowed

Source : (Council of Pharmacy report 2007)

Portugal : Portuguese legislation prohibits ownership of more than four pharmacies

Germany, France, Spain and Portugal all use co-op’s (associations of independent pharmacies) that act as collectives for increased purchasing and marketing strength.

Poland : 10 900 retail pharmacies, about 86% are still owned by indpendent pharmacists
(Source: WHO Report)

Sweden : approx. 950 pharmacies

Up to mid-2009 there was a monopoly system where all pharmacies were operated by government owned Apoteket AB. The government created propsals in Feb 2009 to liberalize this
sytem and open it up to private pharmacy ownership. Around half the Apoteket pharmacies have since been sold off to private ownership.

Romania : approx 6000 pharmacies

The top 5 chains control approx. 12% of the market:
Sensiblu :  221  pharmacies
Catena :  198  pharmacies
City Pharma :  139 pharmacies
Dona :  106  pharmacies
Help Net :  100 pharmacies

There is a large number of small chains. Approx 1000 small chains with 3 or more pharmacies
(Sources: FZ.ro report Dec 2009, Business Romania article , Raiffeisen Investment report)

(Additional sources for this article : The Pharmaceutical Journal, May 2004)

As we can see, the pharamcy market is highly fragmented in Europe. Do you have data of the pharmacy market in your country? If so, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Thanks!

Jogging becomes so much more fun when you can track your progress over time, see the route’s that you’ve run and generally get an handle on your performance. Runkeeper is an amazing iPhone app that lets you do just that, and their latest ‘live’ tracking features really set it apart from any other jogging software we’ve ever seen. Here is a demo video showing off all the exciting new features :

How a person feels has a lot to do with how they sleep and how they wake up. We all know how traumatizing it can be when the alarm clock rings just in the middle of a sleep cycle. That’s where a niftly little application on on the iPhone called Sleep Cycle comes in. According to The Next Web’s review of the application, Sleep Cycle “analyses your sleep patterns throughout the night and wakes you just at the optimum moment when it’s sure that you are in a relatively light sleep. Sleep Cycle produces a graphical analysis of your previous night’s sleep.”
Using the app couldn’t be easier, you just place your iPhone face down under the bedsheet next to your pillow and fall asleep. The app will then wake you with a gentle alarm sound at the correct phase of your sleep cycle, within a 30 minute window around your ideal wake-up time.
This app sounds perfect and I personally can’t wait to try it out.

Great news here in Zurich; we’ve just launched our NextWidgets transactional banners in Switzerland. These are the first ever shopping widgets to be used in Switzerland and hopefully represent the start of a move towards more performance based online marketing by brands and merchants. Read the full story on our NextWidgets blog.