Las Vegas Drops on List of Internet-Savvy Cities in US
Yahoo! Internet Life magazine included in the May issue its yearly ranking of the most-wired cities in the United States.
It came as no surprise that Silicon Valley retained its perch on top of list. Meanwhile, some pondered the meaning of Las Vegas falling three spots--from sixth in last year's survey to ninth place this year--while Boston and Salt Lake City jumped eight places and 17 places respectively.
The big three at the top remain unchanged: San Francisco, San Jose and Austin. The magazine's formula for measuring the wired-ness of cities includes consideration of local governments' Internet usage, sophistication of users based on their online shopping habits, how many local businesses are online and number of overall Internet users.
Eighty-six U.S. metropolitan areas were ranked based on data compiled by Forrester Research and the Internet Geography Project. Tulsa, Okla., Scranton, Pa., and Gary, Indiana occupied the last three positions on the list.
Canadian E-Commerce Market is Volatile
A report released this week by Statistics Canada gave sales figures for Canadian companies utilizing e-commerce, and the results show a high level of volatility in the market.
While online consumer orders to Canadian companies increased 43.4 percent from 2000 to 2001 and online sales compromising 30 percent of gross business income--a rise of 5 percent--the study also found that for every five Canadian firms that started their online sales ventures, four Canadian firms discontinued their own online sales arms.
Additionally, the report stated that 71 percent of Canadian businesses use the Internet and of those companies with 20 or more employees, nine out of 10 were connected.
Internet Explorer Cuts Into Netscape's Market Share
As reported last week by WebSideStory and StatMarket.com, the popularity of Internet Explorer 6 has severely dug into the market share of rival browser Netscape.
Prior to the launch of IE 6, Netscape was steadily securing a 12 percent market share in global browser usage. Since the launch of the upgraded Internet Explorer browser seven months ago, Netscape has seen its share decline sharply to a current global usage of just over 7 percent.
Internet Explorer 6 has seen a rapid uptake, but the new Netscape 6 browser is being heralded as a very strong competitor and with parent company AOL Time Warner behind it, there's still some heat in the browser battle for global market share.
StatMarket.com defines global browser usage share as the percentage of daily, worldwide Internet users accessing the web through a particular browsing program.
UK Seniors Increase Net Usage Dramatically
According to a report released last week by research firm NetValue, Internet users aged 50 and older have jumped on the Web bandwagon in a big way in the last year.
Thirteen percent of the U.K. online population, or about 2 million people, consists of seniors. This represents a 90 percent increase since 2001 in Internet usage and represents one of Europe's highest rates of seniors online. Only Sweden and Denmark exceed the United Kingdom's number of online elders with 17.4 percent and 16.3 percent of the total online populace respectively.
The NetValue report also noted that online banking seems to be popular with the more mature crowd, with almost 25 percent of bank site visits being conducted by users over age 50.
Dutch Increase Online Spending in 2001
A study commissioned for Dutch platform organization HBD, presented by Blauw New Media and released this week indicated a noteworthy increase in online spending by Dutch consumers.
In 2001, online spending totaled 320 million euros, or 0.4 percent of all retail receipts. This amounts to a 50-percent increase over 2000. Roughly 87 percent of the online purchases were conducted at Dutch Web sites.
The companies that ended up big winners of this spending spree were small to medium-sized businesses, two-thirds of which sell products or services via a physical store or catalog in addition to their website.