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'Internet trade doubles every 100th day'

KARACHI: The global Internet business is doubling every 100 days, while the E-commerce is likely to surpass $300 billion mark by 2002.

This was stated by Microsoft's Regional Product Marketing Manager Mazen N. Shehadeh while addressing a seminar here on Saturday to announce benefits for the local computer assemblers.

Information Technology (IT) has become the fastest growing industry in the world he said and pointed out that Internet took only four years to reach 50 million consumers mark, while radio took 38 years and television 13 years.

Shehadeh, who has specially come from Microsoft's regional headquarters in Dubai, said the Internet users jumped to 100 million in 1997 against three million in 1994, while the household access grew to 32 percent in 1998.

The business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it had in the last 50 year, he said adding that the companies that use IT would go up while others would remain far behind.

Microsoft's OEM Business Manager in Pakistan Aadil Ishfaq highlighted the incentives associated with selling Windows operating systems to the customers.

The company has offered special prices for the system builders to help them produce better and reliable products in the country, he said adding that the Pakistani computer manufacturers could now compete internationally, by availing of the Microsoft technology and the tools, that any other large multinational PC-manufacturer would have.

Aadil said very few people knew that Microsoft also had a range of hardware products and asked the system builders to visit the dedicated web site http://www.microsoft.com/oem/ to receive update on technical information on products. The site had already registered 190,000 system builders.

Microsoft has more incentives in the pipeline to promote IT development in the country, he said.

Microsoft Education/IPR Regional Manager, Jawad Al Redha, who had also come from Dubai said that installing legal software on the machines ensures its quality and reliability.

Citing the benefits of legal products he said they received upgrades all the time, which differentiate one's company and products from others, besides reduced support calls and better customers satisfaction.

The legal operating system allows your customers to comply with Pakistani copyright laws too, he added.

Jawad said Microsoft had authorised four software distributors in Pakistan, who were assisting the computer builders in providing international standard computers, based on reliability and technical resoruces.ÑAPP