Zeev.... an interesting study on E-commerce.....
Thursday June 10, 12:02 am Eastern Time
Survey finds Internet economy bigger than expected
WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - All those Furbies, Tamagochis and ''Star Wars'' toys bought at Web auctioneer eBay sure add up.
While some have estimated annual Internet sales in the tens of billions of dollars, a new study from the University of Texas and financed by Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO - news) found that U.S. companies generated a whopping $301 billion in revenue last year from online-related goods and services.
The total, derived from interviews with about 3,000 companies participating in the Internet economy, included $102 billion of Internet commerce, such as sales of books by Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN - news), toys at eToys.com (Nasdaq:ETYS - news) and even subscriptions to thestreet.com (Nasdaq:TSCM - news).
Sales by intermediaries, like stock trades and online travel agents, totaled $58 billion in 1998, the study found.
Nearly half the total came from the hardware and software used to build the infrastructure of the Internet and electronic commerce.
The study found $56 billion was spent last year on software, consulting and training to provide Internet services and another $115 billion was spent on hardware and software to run the lowest layers of the global computer network.
To avoid double counting some revenues, the $301 billion total included a $30 billion reduction from the sum of the four separate categories.
The end results ''seem to exceed all prior estimates,'' said University of Texas Associate Professor Anitesh Barua, who co-authored the study. Starting from almost no online commerce three years earlier, ''the growth rate is nothing short astounding,'' he said.
The study also estimated that 1.2 million U.S. jobs were involved in Internet commerce.
Lehman Brothers senior economist Ethan Harris said the study demolished an assumption by many analysts that Internet sales were concentrated among a few big companies.
''What they found, in fact, is that there are thousands of companies selling on the Internet,'' Harris said. ''That argues for continued growth.''
The figures also put the Internet portion of the economy on par with other more established sectors like automobiles and telecommunications.
E-commerce ''has already achieved a status of great prominence in the U.S. economy,'' said Cisco development manager Doug Karmin. Cisco, the leading provider of Internet switching gear, has seen its stock skyrocket in recent years, already rising more than 20 percent so far in 1999, on the back of the Internet growth wave. |
