2. North america q There is mounting evidence of the gains that enterprises derive from adopting e-business.For example, a survey(Varian et al. 2002)of the impact of Internet use on a sample of some 2,000 orporations in the United States showed that the corporations achieved accumulated savings of $155.2 billion and revenue increases of $443.9 billion between 1998 and 2001. The same study surveyed 634 corporations in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, where the Internet generated savings amounted to $8.3 billion and the additional revenue to $79 billion. By 2010 the accumulated savings for the US sample of enterprises alone are expected to rise to $528.3 billion and the accumulated additional revenues are projected to be $1, 551.9 billion. A that enterprises believe preparing themselves for e-business pays off is the fact that, while investment in information technology (IT) in general decreased by 6.2 per cent in 2002, e-business budgets (for projects in areas such as customer relationship management, procurement, supply chain management, electronic payment and settlement, and enterprise application integration) rose an estimated 1l per cent; in 2003 growth in e-business investment fell to 4 per cent, but this rate was twice as high as the growth in overall IT investment(see Figurel-2) Business to business ecommerce revenue Business to consumer ecommerce revenu 1992000200 19s92000200120022003 Number of online users Number of expected buyers 19992000 2003 Figure 1-2 The Situation of E-commerce in USA 3. Asia stly from the point of view of the relative positions of developed and developing countries,the tion has continued to move towards a growing presence of developing countries on the Internet, although this remains largely concentrated in a relatively small number of nations. Five countries (China, Republic of Korea, India, Brazil and Mexico) account for 61.52 per cent of all Internet users in the developing world. At the end of 2003, almost three out of four Internet users in developing countries lived in the developing countries of Asia, as did two thirds of all the new Internet users in the world. Table 1.2 shows the distribution of Internet users between the developed and the developing countries and the recent evolution of the number of Internet users by region(see Figure1-3)2. North America There is mounting evidence of the gains that enterprises derive from adopting e-business. For example, a survey (Varian et al. 2002) of the impact of Internet use on a sample of some 2,000 corporations in the United States showed that the corporations achieved accumulated savings of $155.2 billion and revenue increases of $443.9 billion between 1998 and 2001. The same study surveyed 634 corporations in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, where the Internet￾generated savings amounted to $8.3 billion and the additional revenue to $79 billion. By 2010 the accumulated savings for the US sample of enterprises alone are expected to rise to $528.3 billion, and the accumulated additional revenues are projected to be $1,551.9 billion. A sign that enterprises believe preparing themselves for e-business pays off is the fact that, while investment in information technology (IT) in general decreased by 6.2 per cent in 2002, e-business budgets (for projects in areas such as customer relationship management, procurement, supply chain management, electronic payment and settlement, and enterprise application integration) rose an estimated 11 per cent; in 2003 growth in e-business investment fell to 4 per cent, but this rate was twice as high as the growth in overall IT investment (see Figure1-2). Figure1-2 The Situation of E-commerce in USA 3. Asia From the point of view of the relative positions of developed and developing countries, the situation has continued to move towards a growing presence of developing countries on the Internet, although this remains largely concentrated in a relatively small number of nations. Five countries (China, Republic of Korea, India, Brazil and Mexico) account for 61.52 per cent of all Internet users in the developing world. At the end of 2003, almost three out of four Internet users in developing countries lived in the developing countries of Asia, as did two thirds of all the new Internet users in the world. Table 1.2 shows the distribution of Internet users between the developed and the developing countries and the recent evolution of the number of Internet users by region (see Figure1-3)