The report said that the main factors helping the continued
growth of the internet include consumer demand for internet
services, more fulfilling on-line users' experiences, growth in
consumers' average on-line tenure and business cost savings.
Jupiter expects that the overall impact of current market
constraints, including reduced financial market liquidity, weakened
consumer confidence and reduced capital and marketing expenditures
that affected on-line advertising revenue, business-to-business
(B2B) trade and B2B infrastructure spending, will be relatively
modest.
Jupiter analysts now forecast that on-line retail commerce will
total $104 billion in 2005 — down 12% from the figure projected
last year — largely due to the on-line grocery meltdown in the US.
Furthermore, on-line-managed business travel is another sector that
has been hit by the slowdown in corporate spending, and Jupiter has
consequently lowered its 2005 revenue target to $25 billion from
the $33 billion originally forecast last year.
PC manufacturer Gateway has announced plans to shut down its
operations in the UK and Ireland, which may result in over 1,000
redundancies from its factories and retail stores. This move comes
as a part of a general restructuring review of the company’s
international strategy following a net loss in its second quarter
earnings results. Gateway is the world’s second largest direct
seller of PCs, after Dell.
