Evolution in Internet Technology

Number of Canadians banking online grew 36 percent
A new survey by comScore Media Metrix finds that online banking In Canada continues to be a popular and growing industry. The number of Canadians banking online grew from 8.7 million in May 2003 to 11.8 million in August 2004, a 36% increase. Currently, 64% of all Internet users in the country have visited banking Web sites. HSBC experienced the greatest growth in the number of unique visitors with a change of 88.3% from August 2003 to August 2004. ING Group's visitor numbers also expanded by a large relative margin, with a 55.4% growth in the one-year period. Overall, men make up a slightly higher percentage of visitors to bank Web sites than women, but the gender picture varies significantly by bank. For instance, 53.6% of ING Canada's visitors are male, while 52.9% of Scotiabank's visitors are female. The banks do vary greatly in terms of the income level of their visitors. ING and Royal Bank both bring in over 25% of their visitors from households with annual income over $100,000 (US). TD, on the other hand, only counts these more affluent households as 16.6% of their visitors. Historically, Canadian households have done more online banking than US households, and this pattern will continue for 2004. eMarketer estimates that 43.7% of US online households will engage in online banking in 2004, a rate already well below that of Canadian online households in 2003.

What's the current status of Instant Messaging in the workplace?
As more and more businesses deploy and use surveillance software to track employee behaviour, vendors that offer workplace monitoring tools are enjoying increasing sales. Security cameras and phone monitoring have long given bosses a view into workers' daily habits. But now employers are going further than ever, thanks to technology that can capture e-mail and instant messaging conversations, or record a worker's every keystroke. Surveillance of e-mail and IMs is on the rise, due to regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the growing use of e-communications as evidence in lawsuits. Workers may not like it, but companies that make snooping software don't mind--the workplace surveillance industry is enjoying a boomlet. Websense, a maker of Internet monitoring tools, has seen its stock price nearly double in the last year, though it saw some gains erased late last week. The company is scheduled to report third-quarter 2004 results on Tuesday. Other top players in the market include SurfControl and Secure Computing. "I think all these companies are seeing great demand," said Katherine Egbert, an analyst with Jefferies & Co. "Lately, regulatory compliance issues, and deadlines for meeting those regulations, have been driving sales."

Online sales to reach $21.6 billion this Christmas
According to projections released by JupiterResearch, online retail sales will reach $21.6 billion this holiday season. Such numbers would mark a rise of 19 percent over 2003, the market research firm said. Nearly 86 million Americans are likely to make purchases online this season, compared with 73 million last year, it said. JupiterResearch is also predicting a 2 percent jump in spending per buyer compared with last year. In addition, U.S. consumers will expand their range of purchases beyond the traditional top-selling categories of toys, books and apparel. "Over half of online holiday shoppers say they will use the Web to get gift ideas or to seek better prices," Patti Freeman Evans, a JupiterResearch retail analyst, said in a statement. "To capture these customers this holiday season, retailers are wise to use e-mails to alert customers who have left items in their shopping carts or wish lists when the price changes or inventories get low on those items." Jupiter's projections are at variance with the data released by Forrester Research recently. Forrester predicts holiday sales to be around $13.6 billion. However, Forrester defines the holiday season as between Thanksgiving and Christmas, while Jupiter's holiday projections cover the whole of November and December.

Could Google remodel and reshape the Internet?
Google, best known for its wildly popular search engine, is invading Microsoft's turf, including its stronghold: the computer desktop. Analysts say Google's aggressive ambitions could pose a formidable threat to Microsoft because it gets to the heart of what drives Microsoft's dominance: its control of the user experience through the Windows operating system. If successful, Google could help refashion computing, making people less reliant on storing information on the Microsoft-powered PC on their desk and more dependent on free Web-based e-mail and search functions that can be accessed anywhere from any device regardless of the operating system. Under such circumstances, the risk for Microsoft is that the computer desktop as we know it could cease to exist, said David Garrity, an analyst with Caris & Co. The question, Garrity said, is whether computer buyers may one day decide that they no longer even need a Microsoft operating system. The two companies are already battling it out on fronts including Web search, free e-mail and better ways for searching individual computers. Analysts say that's evidence Microsoft should - and likely is - taking Google much more seriously.

Children aged between 2 and 11 view 106 percent more Web sites
According to a Nielsen//NetRatings report, children aged 2 to 11 viewed 106% more Web pages on average in October 2004 than two years before in October 2002. Kids are increasing their Web page consumption at a much quicker rate than the overall online population. The average Web user viewed 2% more pages in October 2004 than in October 2003, and 15% more than in October 2002. By contrast, the average child between the ages of 2 to 11 viewed 36% more pages in October 2004 compared with October 2003, and 106% more pages than in October 2002. Although the number of pages visited grew by a much greater percentage for girls and boys than for the average Web user, the average younger user viewed less than one-third as many pages as an average user of all ages. While kids ages 2 to 11 viewed 264 pages on average in October 2004, the average Web user viewed 911 pages during the same time period.

Consumers familiar with Internet movie downloading
A new survey by Ipsos-Insight analyzed over 1,000 US consumers aged 12 and over to determine their level of awareness and usage of movie downloading on the Internet. Despite having not received the media or marketing attention of digital music, familiarity with movie downloading is actually fairly high among consumers — while 33% of respondents have never heard of movie downloading, and 20% say they don't know or are not sure, the remainder, just under 50%, are familiar with the practice (43%), have engaged in it in the past but no longer do so (3%) or currently download movies (1%). Awareness is higher among certain demographic groups, such as men, those between the ages of 12 and 34, and those with annual income over $50,000. As the chart above indicates, the percentage of US consumers who have actually downloaded a movie from the Net is quite low — just 4%. The practice of acquiring movies on file-sharing sites has never reached the levels seen for digital music over similar networks. Part of the reason why movie downloading is not as popular might result from the rise and fall of music file-sharing services.