Mumbai, Aug 02: In the highly volatile Asia-Pacific region, spending in the e-business market would touch a record $996 billion in 2004 from $33 billion in 2000. Asia Pacific region will have a market share of 7 per cent while the USA and Europe would continue to have a dominating presence with 51 per cent and 25 per cent share respectively.Addressing a seminar on "the status of the Asia.coms," Gartner research director Joe Sweeney on Wednesday said that business/IT consulting, Web design and development, integration and implementation and creative services would fetch more revenue in the burgeoning e-business market.
"As early as 2001, Japan will represent slightly less than half of all B2C electronic transaction value in the Asia-Pacific region. By 2003, Asia-Pacific markets will account for about 20 per cent of global B2C e-transaction value while the region outside of Japan will seek $38 billion in total transaction value during same period," Sweeney said.
According to Sweeney, electronic data interchange (EDI) and extensible markup language (XML) should have to play a complimentary role for the speedy growth of B2B markets. "While EDI which is IT-enabled playere, will be a cementing library and a Bible, XML will be a core technology for B2B. XML which is a tool for data translation can go together with EDI," he reiterated. Sweeney said that growth of portals and dot.coms in India is advertising driven. However, he remarked that majority of those companies are going to doom as they are loosely run companies.
He called upon dot.com companies, especially in India, not to blindly imitate US companies but try to work out B2B model based on Indian conditions and exports requirements. At present, the online selling in India is restricted mainly to books, gifts, jewellery which account for mere 25 per cent.
In case of online buying in India, it is recorded at a paltry 2 per cent. The online buying is largely done by the moneyed and well-to-do families.In B2C market, the Indian online consumers will spend on average $30.60 online annually by 2003. This spending power will not be evenly distributed and key consumers will average over $1,400 annually.
Sweeney asked the mushrooming Indian dot.com companies to go in for well planned advertising and marketing campaign. "Mere billboards will not help increase the survival of dot.com companies in India," he opined.
Sweeney pointed out that American dot.com companies spend on an average $20 million or 75 per cent of revenue stream on marketing and advertising.
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