10:57 PM ET 09/08/98
FEATURE-Asia lags in bumpy Internet revolution
By Narayanan Madhavan
NEW DELHI, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The Internet may be a great
leveller. But getting hooked onto it is not an even race.
Experts at the four-day India Internet World conference in
New Delhi last month predicted a shift from the Industrial Age
to a Digital Era, but there were enough signs that it would
take a while for the globe to become a cybernetic village.
Christmas this year could see U.S. shoppers heralding
big-time electronic commerce, but Asia is still a step behind.
Its companies are busy boosting intranets -- Internet-like
networks that link up the interiors of companies.
Before sales, content and services on the Internet bring in
a new age of communications and business, intranets must bring
immediate productivity gains and a technological backbone to
help easy commerce, experts said.
INTRANETS PAVE THE WAY
"While a lot of people talk about the Web (World Wide Web)
and e-commerce, a lot of money in industry is being spent to
ensure that I (firms) have my (their) own enterprise safe,"
Mike Antonelli, International Business Machines Corp's
Asia-Pacific e-business programme director, told delegates.
Intranets and "extranets," their extension to include
suppliers and contractors, still form the leitmotif of the
Internet technology business in large parts of the world.
An IBM document says that by 2000, firms will spend $64
billion worldwide on intranets.
IBM says 80 percent of companies use the Net but only seven
percent conduct e-business. E-business includes intranets,
extranets and e-commerce.
Intranets are a major focus because they help companies
save money and boost efficiency immediately.
E-commerce, still an emerging frontier, entails actual
sales or transactions involving customers on the Internet. Its
potential is limited by the usage of Internet.
ASIA RUNS, BUT SLOWLY
A spokesman for industry research firm International Data
Corp told Reuters in an electronic mail response that 15 to 20
percent of firms in the Asia-Pacific region, on an average,
were planning on implementing an intranet.
He said all of these companies were looking to investing in
security solutions for their networks within a two-year period.
"The countries leading the intranet implementation in the
region were Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and
China, with Hong Kong and Taiwan seemingly lagging behind the
mainland companies in their intranet deployment," he said.
Regional disparities in logging on to the Internet are
wide, according to IDC forecasts.
The Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan, which currently
has around 12.2 million Internet users, is forecast to have
35.3 million users in 2002. Japan's users would increase from
the current 7.35 million to 19.4 million over the same period.
In contrast, the United States now has 56 million Internet
users, and will have more than 137 million in 2002.
Western Europe is forecast to have only around 44.3 million
by 2002, up from the current 28.9 million.
However, according to Micromedia, which organised the New
Delhi conference, Japan already has 10 million users and China
five million.
Only Japan and Australia were close to getting on to
e-commerce in a big way at the moment, IBM's Antonelli told
Reuters. Australia, with 3.6 million connections, has a high,
26-percent penetration in relation to its population.
IDC estimates Australian users at 5.76 million in 2002.
China is forecast to have 9.4 million users, Taiwan 3.3
million, Hong Kong 2.43 million, Malaysia 1.34 million, the
Philippines 0.9 million and Singapore 1.37 million in that
year.
WAITING FOR CHRISTMAS
Even in the United States, the Big Bang is still awaited.
"Christmas 1998 I think is going to be the first year of
serious consumer shopping on the Internet,..." Bill Melton,
chief executive officer of CyberCash Inc , told
Reuters.
Things may change soon. According to Forrester Research Inc
, exchange of goods and services over the Net are set
to cross $327 billion by 2002, up from $17 billion in 1998.
The number of World Wide Web purchasers is expected to
shoot up from 18 million in 1997 to 128 million in 2002,
industry magazine CNET said last month.
The future may come in faster, because Internet has taken
only five years to reach the number radio took 25 years and
television took 15 years, experts say.
But roadblocks are seen.
Antonelli said spending on Internet technologies was still
inhibited by a number of factors, including security concerns,
lack of skills, start-up costs and perceptions of benefits.
There are also lingering anxieties on content on the
Internet, which some say cannot be ignored.
"The industry in the U.S. is so focused on technology that
there are very few thinking on social effects," Ken Freed,
publisher of Internet magazine Media Visions and an analyst of
social effects of interactive media, told Reuters.
Freed singled out sex scandals involving U.S. President
Bill Clinton this year as a case in point.
"Internet played a role in making the story public and did
so in a way below established journalistic standards," he said.
Beyond such pitfalls, experts predict radical changes.
Antonelli mentioned Amazon , a "bookshop without
books," as an example of how technology could change
businesses. Intellectual skills will now emerge as a key force,
he said.
"You are beginning to disassemble the competencies of a
company," he said. In management-speak, that would mark a shift
from "standalone enterprises" to "value nets."
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