Press Releases by WebKnowHow

It Is Estimated That Around One Million Companies Worldwide Now Rely On The Internet Economy for More Than 50% of Their Revenue

November 21, 2006; 08:57 AM
Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c45681) has announced the addition of “November 2006 Global Internet - The Emerging Internet Economy” to their offering..

With over 1 billion people worldwide having access to the Internet, revenue from the large range of available content and services is rapidly increasing and contributing to the overall Internet Economy. Travel, gambling, adult content, music and health services have proved extremely popular with more growth ahead, and sites based on User Generated Content (UGC) are flourishing.

Businesses are also increasing their use of the Internet for e-activities such as transactions, online trading, website marketing, email and other forms of related communications. It is estimated that around one million companies worldwide now rely on the Internet economy for more than 50% of their revenue.

In addition, we are clearly starting to catch glimpses of the new, converged world in which companies such as Google, eBay/Skype, Yahoo!, Vonage, AOL, MSN, News Ltd and Amazon are jockeying for position, with alliances and mergers on the board. Many of the traditional media and telecoms companies will crumble under the changes and be broken up into segments that are easier to merge into the converged industries that lie ahead.

There will also be more and more structural separation between content and distribution, and the one-size-fits-all telecoms, broadcasting or newspaper model is on the way out. New digital media distribution formats around the Internet, triple play, IPTV, podcasting, DVRs and blogging are already emerging. The key reason that the market is suddenly turning towards digital media is the opportunity for attracting new revenues, especially from advertising. Companies will need to develop new business models to succeed in this highly competitive and customer-centric market.

This report discusses business models for the new Internet economy, and examines the underlying trends that are occuring. An overview and statistics of the Internet is provided, including analysis of the net neutrality debate. The report also includes information on the major categories of online content and services, such as travel, gambling, music, health etc. It discusses the recent activities of some of the key players in the Internet Media space, including Google, eBay/Skype, Yahoo!, AOL, and News Ltd. Information and statistics on Internet hosts, domain names, the World Wide Web, search engines and the ISP market is also included, along with detailed technical information on Internet infrastructure.

Key Highlights:

Internet communications are very significant for hundreds of millions of users worldwide, for social, political and business reasons. With the increase of high speed broadband connections, the Internet economy is poised for growth.

Growth in websites reached an all time high in 2006, and ISPs are thriving despite dire predictions over the years.

With only around 16% of the global population online, there is still room for enormous growth of the Internet, and mobile applications will assist this.

As Internet companies increasingly rely on Internet infrastructure for their success, new opportunities to provide support functions will emerge for ISPs and Broadband Service Providers (BSPs).

The enormous increase in video based applications from 2008 onwards will see a rapid demise of the old telecoms infrastructure. The national backbones will need to be dramatically upgraded to cope with the increased traffic. If unchecked; incumbents may use this situation to try and limit video-based access to the Internet media companies, and tax them for their use. This will test the neutrality of the Internet and create some serious regulatory battles.

Google is one of the key Internet Media players, as for many years it has had the lion’s share of the search engine market and as a result, attracts a large proportion of advertising spending. Google retains all advertising revenue from its own websites, and around 22% from its partner sites.

Yahoo! may be in second place to Google, but it is also growing substantially, with around 42% growth in net advertising revenue in 2005.

User Generated Content (UGC) websites, such as Flickr and Wikipedia were among the fastest growing websites between 2005 and 2006.

In most global markets, online travel is one of the few successful B2C e-commerce categories. Travel is the largest category of online spending and one of the most competitive markets on the Internet.

Gambling and gaming is showing some of the fastest growth on the Internet, but the uncertain regulatory environment is creating problems for entrants to this market.