Federal Industry Minister John Manley has pledged to make Canada the most wired nation on Earth by 2000.
Here’s how we are doing:
According to World Times Inc. and International Data Corp., as of earlier this year, Canada was the 10 th most “wired” country in the world, behind the United States, Sweden, Finland, Singapore, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Australia and Japan
Of all search engines, Canadians prefer using Yahoo – 29.8 per cent of surfers use it. Altavista is second at 8.6 per cent
Twenty per cent of Canadians use the Internet at home, 15 per cent at work
Canadians spend an average of 8.2 hours a week on the Internet, almost half of that in the evening
Ninety-one per cent of wired Canadians send e-mail, but only 2 per cent say they’ve engaged in “e-commerce activities”
Of those, only 5 per cent say they shop on-line frequently
Currently, the average Canadian on-line shopper spends $422. Total annual expenditures are estimated at between $1.1 and $1.3 billion
International Data Corp. predicts there will be 500 million Internet users worldwide by 2003
According to Visa, 50 per cent of all fraudulent transactions stemmed from on-line transactions
Roughly US$4.35 billion in e-commerce dollars is at risk because of slow Web pages, according to Zona Research Inc.
The average cost of an e-commerce Web site is US $1milion, according to IDG
Seventy-five per cent of all e-commerce projects fail because of poor planning, according to Gartner Group Inc.