IT spending in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is expected to remain robust in 2005, replicating its growth of 10% in 2004, as compared to 2003. Total IT spending in the region will reach $97 bln in 2005, driven by a healthy 15% growth in China (excluding Hong Kong) and 22% growth in India. These two countries will account for 42% of total IT spending in APEJ in 2005, with China being the more dominant market with 33% share of total IT spending in APEJ. The high growth product/service market segments in 2005 will be: smart handheld devices, IT planning and implementation services, IT training and education, application software, and system infrastructure software.

Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society found 57% of Internet use is devoted to communications (e-mail, instant messaging and chat rooms) and 43% for other activities (Web browsing, shopping and game playing). 8.7% of the Internet time is spent playing online games. 75% of the population in the United States now has access to the Internet either at home or work. As far as online communication, most of the time (37.6%) is spent on colleagues and clients, 30.4% is spent on friends, 16.3% is spent on communicating with the family members, 4.7% in online communities, and 10.9% of the time is spent communicating with others.

45% of adult American online users have taken advantage of features that permit virtual tours of another location. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 52% of those ages 40-49 have participated, compared with 37% of those ages 18-27.

97% of unsolicited e-mail sent in 2004 violated the Can-Spam law, according to MX Logic. Spam made up 77% of e-mail traffic as a whole over 2004. Another researcher, Postini estimates that legitimate e-mail plummeted to 12% from 22% of e-mail traffic in 2004.

Online spending on Visa credit and debit cards surged 57.8% YTY for the week ended Dec. 26, to $1.83 bln from $1.16 bln, according to Visa. Meanwhile, total (online+offline) spending on Visa cards rose 31.8% for the week, to $25.38 bln.

LCD monitor shipments rose 68% sequentially to 414,000 units in Q3 2004 in the Taiwan market due to successful price-cutting strategies from LCD monitor makers, according to IDC.

83% of Pakistani software pirated. The loss to the software industry is estimated at 16 mln dollars.

Nielsen//NetRatings published the list of top online apparel and beauty sites accessed from home.

Forrester Research predicted that over 830,000 US service jobs would be lost to offshore outsourcing by the end of 2005, and 3.4 mln by 2015.

JupiterResearch estimates that search advertising and related services will outpace other segments of online advertising growing from $2.6 bln in 2004 to $5.5 bln in 2009. Search accounts for more than 30% of online advertising spending in the United States.

Both XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio achieved higher than expected results as far as subscriber growth. By the yeat-end 2004 XM boasts 3.1 mln subscribers, while Sirius signed up 1 mln people for its service.

Classified advertising represents a $28-30 bln business in the United States, including $16 bln in daily newspapers. It generates an estimated $100 bln business internationally, according to Classified Intelligence. Revenue growth at national online boards Careerbuilder, Monster and HotJobs was 47.4% in Q3 2004, compared with Q3 2003, versus 15.9% for newspapers’s recruitment category in classified ads, the New York company said. In terms of revenues online boards were way behind newspapers, $217 mln versus $1.1 bln.

For November 2004 online shopping sites accounted for 17% of time spent online - up from 15.8% the previous month. In November 2003 Web surfers spent 17.1% of online time at e-commerce sites. The proportion of time spent at content Web sites declined to 38.7% in November 2004, coming in behind communications-related sites, which captured 40.1% of consumers’ time. Compared to 2003, content sites gained in both share of online time (from 34.6%) and total hours spent online (from three hours and 45 minutes to four hours and 26 minutes).

The top-four Taiwan motherboard makers - Asustek Computer, Elitegroup Computer Systems, Gigabyte Technology and Micro-Star International (MSI) - expect to ship a total of over 100 million motherboards in 2005, compared to about 85 million estimated for 2004, according to the companies.

The daily average number of e-mails blocked by AOL’s spam filters fell 50% to about 1.2 bln e-mails in late 2004 from a peak of 2.4 bln in 2003. As of November 2004, AOL received an average of 2.2 mln complaints daily from its more than 24 mln subscribers, down from 11 mln complaints in the same period in 2003. Attempts made by junk e-mail senders also fell to about 1.6 bln daily, from 2.1 bln in 2003.

South Korea remains the leader in worldwide broadband penetration on almost 25 broadband lines per 100 people, with Hong Kong still in second place with 21 lines per 100 people. The Netherlands has made the biggest impact in this ‘top ten’ overtaking Canada to take 4th place with 17.5 broadband lines per 100. Israel has also been impressive in eighth place with 13.9 lines per 100 - overtaking both Japan and Sweden.

Smaller countries, with less than 500,000 population, are excluded from this ranking but some of them are also reaching high penetrations. Iceland, for example, now has over 12 broadband lines per 100 population.

The USA remains the world’s leading broadband country achieving 31.7 mln lines in Q3 2004. China is in second place, adding 3 mln to reach 22.2 mln lines, and is pulling further ahead of Japan which had 17.2 mln lines. France overtook Canada to take sixth place with 5.7 mln lines. The UK added 762,000 lines in Q3 2004 (the most by any European country) and reached 5.1 mln lines.

In terms of percentage growth Thailand led the way with 95% growth to reach 110,000 lines - which were mainly DSL. Elsewhere, the Eastern European countries have displayed particularly strong growth, due to a combination of strong demand and greater transparency in their respective telecommunications markets. Hungary achieved 69% growth with cable modem and other broadband subscribers now featured amongst mainstream DSL subscriptions. Poland also experienced solid growth of 59% and is approaching 500,000 broadband lines. In other parts of Europe, Turkey continues to grow strongly registering 43% to reach 272,500 broadband lines. Latin American countries also feature in the ‘top ten’ for growth, with Mexico achieving 33% and approaches 500,000 broadband lines. Argentina had growth of 26% as it passed 400,000 lines.

Worldwide broadband subscribers will exceed 150 million before the end of 2004, according to Point Topic. Worldwide broadband subscriptions rose to 136.4 mln in Q3 2004. This marks a 53% increase from 89 mln lines in Q3 2003 - an absolute increase of 47 mln lines. The Asia Pacific share of subscriptions stood at 43% with 58.7 mln lines. EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) market share increased by 4% since Q3 2003 to 27% and 37.1 mln lines, as the Americas share declined by 3% to 30% reaching 40.6 mln lines.