All my life, one product in retail that I have monitored is newspaper sales. Even so, in Australia, probably because I am too close, I just got used to the decline in newspaper's sales so. However, when I went overseas, from what I can remember it was a shock to see the worldwide decline in newspaper sales. The big factor internationally are the cheap android smartphones, which can and are being sold profitably for $50, so just about every potential newspaper customer now has a smartphone including as I saw in poor people in poor countries like Egypt.

France

France used to have many fine newspapers based often on political views, when I spoke to people in France, they told me that the quality had dramatically declined, and they had lost all interest in newspapers. This is the stand this retailer gave it. A wall hanging over the side of the magazine rack.

They had however a nice magazine shelf.

The magazines were all nicely presented and quite reasonable. I thought in price. I saw nothing like the piles of non sellable magazines that I too often find in Australia. Every magazine was well displayed, in order and clearly being monitored for sales performance.

In comparison to the magazines, the card display was small, very small. Why Australia sells so many cards compared to many other similar countries is a mystery to me.

One point that stunned me is the large number of electronic price tags being used there. We have sold many of these, but I had never seen it in such a quantity.

Germany

Germany newspapers tend to be divided up by cities, each large city has their own newspapers. I used to see often a large stand full of German newspapers.

Well as you can see, the stand is gone.

The magazines stand is still there. Not as nicely presented as in France but its tidy and well laid out. Of course very little in Germany is not tidy and well laid out.

Morocco

In Morocco, as in most of the Arab world newspapers are generally sold from newsstands and street vendors in the morning. I noticed a few international French and English papers as well as Arabic newspapers. I saw no magazines for sale there. When I asked people there they told me that they tended to read the newspapers on the Internet, this may be as although Morocco is much better than most of the region the democratisation process has stalled so if you want real news; the Internet is better. Still here is a photo of a newspaper stand I saw there.