Australian IT lifts its game to $22 billion a year

The Australian IT market will grow to be worth $A36 billion by 2004, with overall IT spending set to grow nearly 11 per cent each year, according to a report by IDC Australia. The company found that the local IT market was worth $22 million last year, up by almost 12 per cent on 1998. IDC expects that spending on IT services will double to $A16 billion between 1999 and 2004.

Australians will continue to favour shrink-wrapped software over emerging technologies, so that the boxed-software market forecast to grow more than 15 per cent each year until 2004, according to IDC's projections.

Networking technologies will also continue to grow, driven by Internet start-ups and the requirement for data storage centres, Expanding Internet service providers (ISPs) and further deregulation in the telecommunications industry will also drive growth in IT infrastructure.

IDC's report also predicts a minor boom in hardware sales after the Olympics as the cost of hardware falls and businesses invest in technology upgrades.

Music and book publishers to lose billionsThe music and book publishing industries stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue from online file sharing and there's little anyone can do about it, according to a report by Forrester Research.

Digital rights management (DRM) -- technology for encrypting and watermarking files to impede unauthorised transmission --won't work, according to Forresters because the basic problem is that DRM is trying to keep honest people honest. "With Napster out there, that's not good enough. It only takes one person to break the encryption, and then the encumbered version is competing the unencumbered version on Napster," a Forrester spokesman explained.

Consumers have spoken, and they demand access to content by any means necessary, neither digital security nor lawsuits will stop Internet theft of content, the spokesman added.

Napster's power stands as an indication of what Forrester terms "collapse of control" and as a result Napster's controversial free music file-sharing service is among the fastest growing Web sites ever. Record company lawsuits against Napster haven't exactly stigmatised online trading of pirated music and even if Napster dies in bankruptcy, music consumers will move to underground Internet services like Gnutella and Freenet, the spokesman added.

Forrester estimates record labels will lose $US3.1 billion and book publishers $US1.5 billion by 2005 as a result of file sharing.

Wireless data users on unstoppable roll

The number of subscribers to wireless data services will grow rapidly from 170 million worldwide in 2000 to more than 1.3 billion in 2004, according to a study released by market research company Cahners In-State Group. As a result, more than 1.5 billion cellular phone handsets, personal digital assistants and Internet appliances are expected to be equipped with wireless capabilities by the end of 2004.

Messaging will be the primary driver of wireless data adoption, according to the Cahners study, and the number of wireless messages sent per month will rise rapidly from three billion in December 1999 to 244 billion by December 2004.

Other features such as mobile commerce applications, entertainment, real-time financial information services -- getting directions to the closest restaurant or bank -- will also be popular but will take longer to reach the market, according to the study.

Wireless and Wire-Based Networks convergeThe proliferation of wireless mobile communications as an additional medium for data communications marks the start of a new phase in the Internet as it evolves into a Supranet, according to Gartner Group. By 2005, 25 per cent of profitable Internet applications will be delivered in a framework based what Gartner defines as the Supranet, integrating at least three types of communication media into each interaction.

Gartner defines the Supranet as the emerging, ubiquitous network infrastructure that links the "e-world" (the world of electronic devices such as computers, phones and televisions) and the "p-world" (the physical world of paper, houses, people, vehicles and so forth) within natural human interactions.

Enterprises that recognise the opportunity and challenge presented by the emergence of the Supranet will participate in the next major phase of the Internet, Gartner believes. Those who treat the arrival of wireless access to the Internet as just another terminal device and protocol set to worry about, will find themselves as far behind as those that thought the Internet was not relevant to their industry or community.

A Gartner spokesman said that the key is to recognise that wireless opens up a new world of linked interactions using mobile and fixed devices in innovative ways. These are not just phones and PCs, but music players, cameras, map terminals, game machines and more. Building Supranet applications will involve linking all of these together, to create new experiences, not just presenting a cut-down Web page on a four-line display.

Asian Business unaffected by e-commerce

Electronic commerce has had a "moderate" or "non-existent" impact on business, according to almost 80 per cent of corporate chief executive offers in the Asia-Pacific region who participated in a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey, which found that only around 20 per cent of CEOs acknowledged "any kind of impact" of e-commerce on their businesses. Only two per cent of CEOs thought e-business had "reshaped" their business.

PwC found that more than one-third of Asian CEOs surveyed considered their company's Web site "behind the pack" as a useful tool to communicate with capital markets. Only one-third of respondents though their company Web site was the "best of its class", PwC said.

USB rising to dominance

Already ubiquitous on new PCs, the Universal Serial Bus (USB) will soon be the dominant interface between PCs and peripherals, according to Cahners In-Stat Group. The high tech market research firm found that USB is present in 99 per cent of PCs shipping today and by 2004, about 750 million USB-equipped desktop and notebook PCs will be in use. Shipments of USB- enabled peripherals will grow an estimated 141 per cent in 2000 and an average of 55 per cent per year until the end of 2004.

Video cameras and scanners represent the majority of peripherals that are equipped with USB today, Cahners found. In 1999, 54 per cent of video cameras and 38 per cent of scanners shipped with USB ports.

The USB standard will also be incorporated into printers, monitors, keyboards, mice, analog and digital modems, standalone hubs, external storage drives and other peripherals. Cahners predicts that by 2004, 88 per cent of scanners shipped will feature USB technology, as will the majority of peripherals.

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