Compiled by Vicky Nolan
How Much Money Will Net Betting Generate?
The Financial Times says that online betting is "destined to grow apace." Supporting that theory, the publication quotes a couple of industry studies. First, U.K. research firm MMD expects online betting to hit $14 billion by the end of 2001. Plus, U.S. investment firm Merrill Lynch is reportedly set to release a report that estimates Net betting will generate gross revenues (after paying punters' winnings) in excess of $75 billion by 2010. Of that figure, $31 billion will be from online sports betting companies.
Digital TV, the Next Next Big Thing
Satellite pay-TV services are expected to lead Europe into the digital future, according to a new report from Datamonitor. By 2004, the report said, the U.K. will be the most advanced digital television market in Europe, with more than 39 million digital TV homes, compared to 9.9 million today.
Also, by 2004, satellite pay-TV services will control more than 50 percent of the European digital marketplace. Digital cable will account for 34 percent of the market and digital terrestrial for 15 percent,
representing a more balanced marketplace than in 1999, when digital satellite services dominated more than 80 percent of the digital European market.
www.datamonitor.com
Interactive TV Will Be Big in Europe, Too
"TV will be the platform for consumer interactivity," said Dr. Therese Torris, director of European e-commerce for Forrester Research. "With a potential base of over 200 million TV sets in Europe, iDTV will overtake the Internet as Europe's primary e-commerce platform."
Torris added, "Early teletext and Web-on-TV efforts have lacked compelling interactivity. But in the last few years, a more promising technology has emerged: iDTV. Because it comes as a free add-on to popular digital pay-TV systems in Europe, penetration is growing rapidly."
www.forrester.com
No Taxes or No Purchases, Say Online Buyers
Nearly two-thirds of online buyers said they would make fewer purchases from online merchants if they had to pay a sales tax, according to a Flash Survey conducted by BizRate.com and the Association for Interactive Media.
"There's no question the tax issue will impact the future of e-commerce," said Chuck Davis, BizRate.com president and CEO. The Flash Survey also shows that age, gender and income are also factors in online buyer behavior if a sales tax were instituted.
www.bizrate.com
Talking On the Internet Is Big
The global voice-over-packet services market is expected to grow by $87 billion by 2004, according to GartnerGroup. "We expect that North American dominance of the voice-over-packet services market will lessen as Asia/Pacific and Western Europe become high-growth markets," said Bhawani Shankar, program manager for GartnerGroup's Dataquest e-packet voice services research program.
"North America, which now accounts for more than 65 percent of VoIP call revenues, will have less than 40 percent of the market in 2004," he added.
www.gartner.com
Russia's Internet Community Is Growing
Russian Internet investments are expected to reach $100 million this year, compared to $60 million last year, Nando Times quoted from Russian economic newspaper Vedomosti. "Management salaries in the Internet sector are $7,000 a month and will reach $10,000 between now and the end of the year," Pavel Cherkashin, head of Actis Systems, was quoted as saying. The average salary for Russian workers was $67 per month in February.
Booming Business on the Web
The past four months have seen substantial growth in business-to-business advertising, with a 58 percent increase in the number of companies advertising and a 66 percent increase in the average number of ad impressions per company. In addition, AdRelevance writes in the study, Business is Booming, B2B banner advertising accounted for approximately 1.9 billion ad impressions (roughly a 5 percent share of all online advertising) during the fourth quarter of 1999.
The study breaks down their findings in several ways:
- Share of impressions by industry;
- Industry growth rates; and
- B2B share of impressions by industry segment, among others.
www.adrelevance.com
PKI Is Set to Boom
Public key infrastructure (PKI) is set to boom, with total revenues expected to reach $3.5 billion by 2003. PKI is likely to experience an average growth of 73 percent yearly until 2003, Datamonitor said in
Public Key Infrastructure, 1999-2003.
In addition, PKI's growth will provide massive opportunities for software developers, systems integrators, professional service providers and specialist PKI service providers. Driving the expected growth of PKI is its capacity, unlike any other technology, to safeguard integrity, authentication and non-repudiation, which will help business conduct business online without compromising IT security.
www.datamonitor.com