Scotland is renowned worldwide for its innovation in the creative and digital media sectors, which currently contribute over £2 billion to the national economy each year. Representing a wide and varied sector, creative industries and digital media includes design, video, film, computer games and software and electronic publishing. Scotland's digital media sector now has a revenue in the region of £3.16 billion, with over 40,000 employees working across a range of innovative sub-sectors.
A 2007 analysis placed a value of $1.6 trillion on the global entertainment and media industry, with growth forecast at an average rate of 7% until 2012. Areas where strong growth was predicted included the mobile and wireless sectors and video gaming.
The sports market has also seen a rapid increase in the adoption and use of social media platforms. Many sports fans are using YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to follow and track their favourite sports, leading to creative advertising campaigns by major sports brands, such as Nike's Write the Future campaign during the World Cup 2010.
Another growth area is the development of mobile applications for use with smartphones. Recent estimates suggest that there were 11.65 million smartphones in the UK in 2010, and Apple have projected sales of 28 million iPads for 2011. Mobile apps now form a key part of fan interaction across the sports market. The Wimbledon 2011 app, developed by IBM, allows users to access news, player statistics, radio commentary and video content through their smart device. Similarly, adidas developed the miPhone app, allowing users to access a range of online training programmes under the guidance of a voice enabled personal coach, using GPS technology to monitor performance.
The video games industry is a key sector within the Scottish economy. This growing industry is made up of more than 80 games studios, and has at its centre a cluster of games developers based in Tayside. The University of Abertay, Dundee is also key to the development of the games industry, and is home to the Institute of Arts, Media and Computer Games.
A growing trend in the sports sector is the increasing popularity of exergaming formats. This newly developed area focuses on the link between computer games and exercise, using products such as the Nintendo Wii Fit. Recent studies have shown the use of video games to exercise as having a positive effect on children, with research carried out by Liverpool John Moores University concluding that regular use of exergaming platforms could help users to lose around 27lbs a year.