PC market to enjoy healthy growth

The global PC market will experience double-digit year-over-year growth in 2004 and 2005, according to a report Piper Jaffray released Wednesday.

Source: news.com

Many Wireless Networks Lack Security

With a laptop perched in the passenger seat of his Toyota 4Runner and a special antenna on the roof, Mike Outmesguine ventured off to sniff out wireless networks between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He got a big whiff of insecurity.

While his 800-mile drive confirmed that the number of wireless networks is growing explosively, he also found that only a third used basic encryption—a key security measure. In fact, in nearly 40 percent of the networks not a single change had been made to the gear's wide-open default settings.

Source: eWeek

Microsoft Stretches Product Support to 10 Years

"Starting June 1st, Microsoft will offer an expanded product-support lifecycle policy, providing customers with a minimum of 10 years of mainstream and extended support for business and developer products...."

Source: NewsFactor

2004 1st Quarter Retail E-commerce Sales up 28% from One Year Ago

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the first quarter of 2004, not adjusted for seasonal, holiday, and trading-day differences, was $15.5 billion, an increase of 28.1 percent (±2.9%) from the first quarter of 2003. Total retail sales for the first quarter of 2004 were estimated at $834.8 billion, an increase of 8.8 percent (±0.6%) from the same period a year ago.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Google Users are getting what they expect

90% of Google users reported having a strongly positive experience, while only 68% of users said the same of Yahoo, 50% for Ask Jeeves, 48% for Lycos and 41% for MSN.

Source: News.com

E-Commerce Up to 1.9 Percent of All Sales

The U.S. Commerce Department reported that online sales, not including travel or other services, grew 28 percent, reaching about 1.9 percent of all sales. That's up from about 1.6 percent the same quarter the year before.

Source: MarketingVOX

Small Businesses Keen on Big Net

Small businesses in the US are embracing the Web as a marketing tool, using it to a greater degree than more traditional advertising methods.

Source: eMarketer

Google Moves Toward Clash With Microsoft

Google, the Web search engine, is preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software search tool for locating information stored on personal computers.

Source: NY Times

New Standard Could Reduce Spam

Yahoo releases a new e-mail standard called DomainKeys that could stop spammers from using legit e-mail addresses to disguise their evil mass mailings. (Yeehaw!)

Source: Wired

Search Engine Stats (The Big Three)

Roughly 41 per cent of U.S. Web users went to Google's search engine in March, compared with 31 per cent for Yahoo and 28 per cent for MSN.

Source: Nielsen/Net Ratings

"Cheap" and "Free" Keywords: Not Always a Bargain

In an ongoing paid search advertising campaign, a large insurance company expressed interest in appending some of its keywords and keyword phrases with the words "cheap" and "free," as in "cheap health insurance" and "free insurance quote."

We tested these phrases and noticed some trends. Keywords and keyword phrases with solid conversion rates plummeted when "cheap" or "free" was appended onto them....A second phenomenon is the relationship between longer keyword phrases and higher conversion rate....The longer the keyword phrase, the higher the conversion rate.

Source: ClickZ

Personal Surfing Just Part of the Workday

Did you know that one online movie trailer can use as much bandwidth as 10,000 e-mails? Most employees aren't aware of the data clog either, as they use corporate networks for personal usage.

Source: EarthWebNews

Net Drives Profits to Small Biz

The Internet equals profits for more than half of the 400 small businesses (SBs) that participated in an eBay-commissioned survey, conducted by ACNielsen, and a small portion reported that without the Web, they wouldn't have a business.

While 51 percent of the respondents indicated that the Internet has improved their profitability, 58 percent said the medium has helped their businesses grow or expand. Fully one-third of the survey participants, which included merchants who have used eBay, sell goods and services online, and 15 percent said the Internet is essential to their survival.

Source: ClickZ

A Perfect Market

According to America's Department of Commerce, online retail sales in the world's biggest market last year rose by 26%, to $55 billion. That sounds a lot of money, but it amounts to only 1.6% of total retail sales. The vast majority of people still buy most things in the good old "bricks-and-mortar" world.

But the commerce department's figures deal with only part of the retail industry. For instance, they exclude online travel services...financial services, ticket-sales agencies...online pharmacies....

And there is more. The commerce department's figures include the fees earned by internet auction sites, but not the value of goods that are sold: an astonishing $24 billion-worth of trade was done last year on eBay, the biggest online auctioneer. Nor, by definition, do they include the billions of dollars-worth of goods bought and sold by businesses connecting to each other over the internet. Some of these B2B services are proprietary; for example, Wal-Mart tells its suppliers that they must use its own system if they want to be part of its annual turnover of $250 billion.

So e-commerce is already very big, and it is going to get much bigger. But the actual value of transactions currently concluded online is dwarfed by the extraordinary influence the internet is exerting over purchases carried out in the offline world. That influence is becoming an integral part of e-commerce.

Source: The Economist

Holiday Online Spending

Did you know that consumers spent a record $18.5 billion, excluding travel, shopping online during the 2003 holiday season? This represents a 35% increase in spending over the $13.7 billion spent online during 2002 holiday season.
SOURCE: Nielsen/NetRatings 01/05/04