An extract from an article by John Helmer in this month’s edition of Human Capital Management magazine reads: ‘The Hambrecht report in 2000 defined three supplier segments in e-learning: technology, content and services. Even then the lines were blurring, with providers branching into other areas driven by client need… Large companies in IT, business consulting and managed services, including IBM, Accenture and Capita, fostered in-house e-learning operations. …[This] makes it hard to give an overall size to the UK e-learning market, since companies like Accenture and IBM do not break out e-learning revenues in their financial reporting – and, in some cases, outsource elements of their e-learning to boutique providers, providing a risk of double counting. Our best guess would be to say that the total value of the UK e-learning market is greater than £160m, but unlikely to exceed £250m all told.

‘Growth, too, is hard to pin down, for similar reasons. However in certain sections of the market, growth can be seen around the level of 25 per cent a year. If accurate, this would be broadly in line with growth in the web design and development market, which shares common drivers with e-learning in rates of internet and broadband adoption.’

Comment:  This article – the result of much painstaking research, funded by Learning Light – provides an excellent ‘best guess’ about the size of the UK’s e-learning market. It should form the basis for on-going market research which would help us all to identify the leading e-learning producers; who’s ‘hot’ and who’s not, and so on. Learning Light members (see www.learninglight.com) could soon be much better informed than most about this industry.