Monday, March 4, 2002		Latest in IT world

By the end of the year, more than 600 million people will access the Internet worldwide, spending more than $1 trillion, a new study from IDC reveals. This data, generated by version 8.1 of IDC's Internet Commerce Market Model, indicates that even in the current global recession, the Internet is huge and growing. However, the concept of the Internet as a great unifying force, allowing businesses to reach the most remote corners of the globe via one medium, with one message, has developed more into a reflection of the diversity that exists throughout the world. The Internet users once had a similar profile. Now they are all ages, all education levels, all occupations and from all countries. Users could once connect only from PCs, but now connect from PCs, Web TVs, Palm Pilots, and mobile phones, and how they connect very much depends on their technology orientation and policies of the local country.

The current slowdown in the IT market has little impact in the Middle East since the region is a emerging market and has yet to reach the saturation stage, industry officials told Khaleej Times. Industry officials say that the failure of dot-com initiatives and expected lower spending by consumers and corporates are affecting the IT markets globally. They add, however, that in the Middle East, the effect has been low due to a host of reasons, top of which is the fact that Middle East market is an emerging one, and has yet a lot of time ahead to reach the saturation stage as is the case with the mature Western markets. Describing the IT market in the region as bullish, Eric Tien, Managing Director of Acer Computer (ME), said the IT industry in the Middle East is bound to achieve more growth, at least for the coming five years.

Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies), the apex industry association of IT Software and Service companies in India, has announced that it is in partnership with international strategic marketing consulting firm Frost and Sullivan to conduct a study on "Defining the Market Potential & Characteristics for key e-Business Applications in Asia & Drawing Market Strategies for Indian IT companies." This is a part of Nasscom initiative to identify the growth opportunities for Indian Software and Service companies in Asia-Pacific and help them develop a roadmap for developing IT solutions in e-Business. Nasscom and Frost & Sullivan signed a Letter of Engagement (LoE) to this effect last week. The study aims to cover 8 enterprise applications across 13 geographies in Asia within 8 different industry verticals.

He is only three years old, but already Girish Srinivasan has taken to computers The Straits Times reported. He can boot a computer up, switch on the speakers and modem, and hook up to the Internet in a jiffy, said his proud mother, Mrs Yoga Srinivasan, 31, a housewife. She added that he first showed an interest in the family's laptop when he was 18 months old. At that time, she was using it to play music for him. It did not take him long to learn to click on the start-button icon on the screen to shut down the machine, which he does when he is drowsy. Today, the cheerful, talkative boy weaves his way effortlessly through a series of four pop-up screen menus to find the application he wants. He is glued to his computer for about four hours a day, visiting children's websites such as a Tamil portal with content for children, and launching Yahoo! Messenger to send smilies - cartoon faces portraying various emotions - to friends and relatives in his mother's PC address book. He figures it all out through visual images because he cannot read yet.