When Will Growth Flatten?
So when will the growth of the internet, overall, begin to flatten?
Frankly, at Briefing.com we don't really know, but neither does anyone else. However, it is time to begin thinking about it. Here are four recent events that brought us to this conclusion.
PC Usage and Internet Usage is not rising rapidly as PCs and the internet penetrate the rest of the population. A recent survey done by Arbitron New Media, as reported in the June 21 Wall Street Journal, showed that while 59% of all US homes now have PCs, the percentage of adults using the machines fell from 90% to 53%. The numbers are especially interesting because they exclude usage by children. This means that while the new PCs being purchased is going up, the new users aren't really using them for much. The study also showed that the new PC owners do sign up for internet services, bringing the total US internet population to 38% of the nation's population. But only 2/3 of those signed up for internet services actually use them regularly or had made an online purchase. This survey, the full results of which have still not yet been released, may indicate that the current incarnation of the internet is simply too hard to use to capture the rest of the mass market yet.
Charles Schwab average daily trades going down: On June 14, Schwab (SCH) reported a slowdown of (28%) in total overall daily trades in the month of May. This is in spite of a continued growth of accounts. While it means that more people are online, they are, as a group, doing less. This confirms the trend shown by the Arbitron survey.
Amazon.com (AMZN) refuses to release revenue on book sales alone. Amazon no longer reports revenue broken out by category. This deprives everyone of seeing the revenue curve of book sales by themselves. Could it be that book sales have flattened? If so, we'll never know, because it will be buried in overall revenues, which includes other product lines and acquisition revenue streams.
Cyberian Outpost (COOL) had a sequential revenue decline in the most recent quarter, as reported last week. In the early stages of a boom market, everyone is supposed to benefit. It isn't until the market begins to slow that companies lose absolute market share to others |
