Product classifications are used by statistical offices and others for a number of measurement
purposes. These include measurement of product usage, current and capital expenditure on products,
domestic production, and trade in goods and services. They are therefore an important element of a set of statistical standards, with Information Economy (IE) standards no exception.
This document presents the definition of information economy (IE) products developed by the WPIIS
Classifications Expert Group. The product definitions complement the IE sector definitions that were
released in early 2007. The latter are based on the 2007 revision of the UNSD’s International Standard
Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC Rev. 4).
The document includes two IE product definitions,3 ICT products and Content and media products.
Each definition is a subset of the Central Product Classification (Version 2) developed by the United
Nations Statistical Division (UNSD) and both are expressed in terms of 5-digit subclasses of the CPC. The CPC was finalised in December 2008.
