Monday, August 27, 2001		Article

Asian Net sector has room to grow

THE Asian Internet sector has room to grow as no clear winners have emerged, NetValue says.

"Within the individual Asian markets, the industry is extremely fragmented," Clayton Fitts, NetValue’s vice president of Asia-Pacific sales and marketing, said in a statement.

The top five Internet sites in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan control only 25 percent of the total minutes spent by users online, the Internet measurement company said.

In comparison, the top five Internet properties in the United States control close to half of all user minutes.

Share of minutes is a tangible measure of brand loyalty on the Internet and companies controlling a greater proportion of online minutes are industry leaders, the NetValue report said.

"Share of minutes by companies outside of the top 10 properties drops to less than one percent each in most markets," Fitts added. "This illustrates a potential for a handful of companies to take control."

Asian markets are dominated by a mix of both international and local players, with Yahoo! holding top spot in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

AOL Time Warner, which controls the bulk of user minutes in the USA, does not feature among the Asian countries surveyed.

JAPANESE game maker Nintendo Co Ltd said last week it plans to ship 5,00,000 of its new GameCube video game consoles at the Japan launch on September 14 and repeated its aim of four million shipments worldwide by March 31.
Nintendo Executive Vice President Atsushi Asada told a news conference the 4 million unit target, issued by the company in May, remained unchanged.
Worries have mounted in the market about the possibility that hardware problems could delay the launch of the GameCube or of the rival Xbox next-generation game console also due for roll-out this autumn by Microsoft Corp.The GameCube is due for launch in the US market in November.