To: JPR who wrote (41151 ) 11/29/1997 10:35:00 AM From: greenspirit Respond to of 186894
Hi Paul and Everyone...Article...Big Recomputation of Sales on Net... By Mitchell Martin International Herald Tribune LAS VEGAS - Internet commerce could grow to the $1 trillion-a-year range shortly after the turn of the century, the chief executive of Cisco Systems Inc. said Tuesday, calling industry forecasts of electronic business volume far too low. John Chambers, whose company makes about 80 percent of the routers that move packets of information around the Internet, said that Cisco alone was selling $3.2 billion a year worth of its products electronically, about 39 percent of total orders. Such performance has raised consensus estimates of annual on-line sales to about $25 billion from $5 billion, he said Mr. Chambers, addressing the Comdex Fall computer trade show here, said analysts had been projecting between $20 billion and $300 billion a year in Internet commerce by 2001, estimates he said might be short by a factor of five. Internet commerce is mainly business-to-business, he said, which is one reason it is not highly visible. He predicted that growth in retail sales would follow.Likening the Internet expansion to the Industrial Revolution, Mr. Chambers said that there were profound changes in store for companies, which would find what they had considered advantages to no longer be assets. Consider toy retailers. Many parents, he said, dread the lines and noisy atmosphere at big toy stores, and are often disappointed when popular items demanded by their children are sold out. On-line ordering, he said, will allow shoppers to skip the trip and have gifts wrapped and delivered to recipients all over the world. For retailers of all kinds, that view implies that having many stores and large inventory would no longer provide an edge over one centrally located facility with an efficient ordering operation. ______________________________________________________________________ Regards, Michael