Are Russians Internet Illiterate?
According to a recent study by the Russian Obshchestvennoye Mneniye (Public Opinion) Foundation, many Russians have little or no knowledge of the Internet. More than 69,000 people in 115 cities were questioned during the study's course. The results, as reported in Tass, show that 20.3 percent of
Russians have no knowledge of the Internet, while another 35.6 percent have scant knowledge of it. So far only 11.3 percent of the respondents actually had Internet access, whether it was at their home, at work or elsewhere.
B2B E-Commerce Will Accelerate This Year
Online business collaboration (OBC), the "next generation" of business-to-business e-commerce, will accelerate this year, according to a report by Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., Inc. The study shows that more and more companies are using the Internet to build direct communications channels with suppliers and other online partners, thanks in large part to new software that streamlines the supply chains and eliminates third-party vendors. This, in turn, will open up a new era of direct collaboration and commerce online. "The first generation of online business commerce centered around procurement and executing individual transactions," a spokesperson said, "and while this continues to serve an important purpose in the
consumer market, it's not equipped to foster deep and broad online commerce between enterprises. Instead, real-time collaboration - from product design to product fulfillment - will be necessary for online business to achieve widespread market adoption." The report also details 10 trends that will define and shape the OBC market within the next year or so, as well as what are likely to be some of the fundamental shifts affecting how companies conduct and transact business online. The complete report is available at
www.fbr.com.
A 'Lotta' Dot-com Deaths During 2000
Last year at least 210 dot-coms closed up shop, according to a report by WebMergers, with 60 percent of the closings occurring during the year's final quarter. Many were able to hang on so long thanks to a March stock market rally that kept them solvent longer. Of the 40 or more companies that closed down in December, at least a quarter are hoping to sell off their assets or reorganize through bankruptcy filings or some other means. Before their December closing, the companies had received at least $1.5 billion in investment funds from venture capitalists and other private and public investors. More than half of these companies were e-commerce companies, 30 percent were content properties and the remaining were
infrastructure and online services companies. WebMerger's Year 2000 Dot Com Shutdowns report is available at www.webmergers.com.
Online Investing Sites Suffer as Economy Cools
A new Internet Satisfaction Monitor report from cPulse shows that consumer investors are becoming less satisfied with financial and investment sites as the economy slows down. Customer loyalty to investing content-based sites has dropped steadily since last summer, and even the customers who remain loyal to a particular site reported less satisfaction with their favorite investing sites. "It appears that swings in the market over the last three quarters have caused consumers to be even hungrier for up-to-date, fact-rich
research that could help guide their financial decision making," a cPulse analyst said. "We noticed that as the market worsened, consumers became increasingly critical of the sites they relied upon for financial support." Another spokesperson added, "Apparently consumers were demanding more and more of their financial sites and they became more than just a place to check stock quotes and make purchases. Those sites not keeping up with consumer demands by providing rich research and up to the minute advice and
content received poor scores from consumer investors." The analysts suggest that online investing sites can improve by making three changes: offer as much historical content online as is available offline; offer more
analyst-level perspective including FAQs, comprehensive performance analysis and news coverage; and offer tutorial resources that teach investors how to use the information that is provided.
Does File Sharing Violate Copyright Laws?
Despite the popularity of online file sharing services, such as Napster, Gnutella or Scour, many consumers believe that these services violate copyright laws, reports Gartner Group. Their study comes out just as many companies that provide file sharing services are making their case before American courts. Gartner's study shows that among U.S. Internet users who listen to downloaded files, 28 percent agree that using file sharing sites violates copyright laws, 28 percent disagree, and 44 percent are downloading files despite not being sure about the legality of it. A spokesman commented, "The absence of a legal alternative is clearly driving a significant percentage of music listeners to participate in an activity that they know or suspect to be illegal."
Yankee Group Makes Predictions for New Year
Although Yankee Group is known more for reporting on various industry events and trends, analysts there have made a few predictions about what's likely to occur in several industries during 2001. Among their predictions:
- Customer care and billing market space will abound with merger and acquisition activity. With the stock valuations of many public companies (i.e. Portal, Daleen, etc.) having suffered, and other companies emerging as stronger worldwide players (i.e. Geneva), these companies could be now considered prime targets for acquisition. In addition, larger companies like Nortel Networks, and Cisco Systems may be looking to acquire some of the players in the billing space to complete or add to their end-to-end solution
offerings, making them a one-stop shop for both hardware and software.
- Deployments of wireless Internet solutions will finally take hold, and rapidly growing service firms will make major commitments in this area. Since wireless technological innovation is mostly located in Europe, expect to see many more acquisitions of European wireless service firms by North American companies that are trying to quickly develop wireless capabilities for the coming wireless wave. Because selling a wireless solution is difficult, service vendors will have to provide extensive consulting so that
users can understand the opportunities in wireless. As a result, we expect strong growth in consulting.
- Emergence of carrier-scale storage solutions is imminent, and they will become available over the next 12 months. These solutions will be highly scalable, easy to manage products that meet or exceed current performance measures, and will be adopted first by storage service providers.
- Merger and acquisition game of long distance carriers in 2001 will see a rise with major internal changes taking place in many of the IXCs, as well as the recent volatility of their stock prices. A portion of one of these major players will end up being the target of a takeover. Whether a major international carrier or a next-generation IXC makes the move, no one should be surprised to see a significant change in the make-up of the major telecommunications service provider market. And even if the IXCs are not the
target of a merger or acquisition, they themselves are very likely to make a serious play for some of the struggling CLECs and the new technology and local footprint they offer.
- Online content syndication provider market extends to corporate enterprises. As the consumer portals scramble for profits, players in the content syndication and aggregation arena emerge to help make doing business in the content market cost effective and (eventually) profitable. As business intelligence quickly becomes an online content management issue for enterprises, consumer focused online content syndication solutions providers such as iSyndicate and ScreamingMedia will expand their capabilities to include developing content management solutions for corporations.
To read the Yankee Group's complete list of predictions, visit their website at www.yankeegroup.com.