People power to make China online capital
First come the eyeballs, then the e-commerce. If that pattern, established over the past decade in the developed internet markets, continues to hold good, there is little doubt about where the centre of gravity in the online commerce business will shift in the coming years.
China already had 59m internet users at the end of 2002, making it the fourth largest internet market in the world, according to Morgan Stanley. And to judge by the communications infrastructure being put in place, it will quickly vault to the top of the league: it already ranks first in terms of the number of mobile phone users (207m), cable TV subscribers (100m) and telephone lines (214m).
But while China is witnessing an explosion of internet use, its adoption of e-commerce is likely to happen far more slowly, says Mary Meeker, the Morgan Stanley internet analyst who was one of the first prophets of the US dotcom boom. Speaking last month at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco a coming-out party for the latest dotcom revival she pointed to the lack of efficient systems for shipping goods and the scarcity of credit cards as two of the reasons why e-commerce was not about to take off in the middle kingdom.
If a boom in e-commerce in China still lies some way in the future, other countries are just at the point where paying for goods or entertainment online is turning into a mainstream activity following a trend set in the US. The evidence is clearest from the rapid internationalisation of the handful of big US e-commerce companies, such as eBay and Amazon.com, that dominate the online consumer business.
This next, global leg of the e-commerce wave already looks like it will be heavily influenced by ideas being developed in the US.
“Most of the innovation will come from global companies, and from start-ups in the US,” said John Doerr, the venture capitalist who backed early dotcoms such as Netscape and Amazon. Besides their longer management experience and proven business models, the new band of US internet multinationals has significant financial and technological resources, illustrated by the recent spate of acquisitions carried out by companies such as eBay and Yahoo.
Web 3.0, when it comes, may well look different, says Mr Doerr. By then, many of the leading ideas “could easily come” from outside the US, he adds.
Given the way different internet markets are developing around the world, some of the characteristics of those future e-commerce markets may already be coming into view.
In China, for instance, online game players, often congregating in internet cafés, are driving the adoption of broadband internet connections. Some 15m of the country's 24m internet subscribers are gamers, estimates Morgan Stanley.
And mobile phones look set to play an important role: China has 3.5 times as many mobile phones as internet users, more than double the proportion of other countries where mobile handsets play a big part, such as Japan and Germany. In the US, the ratio is still below 1. Different local characteristics like that are already starting to stimulate new ways of reaching online consumers.
“A lot of this stuff is not made in America any more,” said Ms Meeker.
Some 70 per cent ofChina's internet users are under the age of 30, compared to just 30 per cent of US internet users. As that new generation matures, it could well find itselfeventually at the forefront of e-commerce's next-but-one big thing.
不可低估中国网虫实力
先有眼球，再有电子商务。如果发达国家互联网市场在过去10年里确立的这一模式普遍适用，那么我们就不用怀疑电子商务的未来中心在哪里了。
据摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的数据，中国2002年年末已有5900万互联网用户，位列全球第四大互联网市场。若以部署到位的通信基础设施来衡量，中国将很快登上头把交椅：在手机用户数(2.07亿)、有线电视用户数(1亿)和电话线门数(2.14亿)方面，中国已经排名第一。
但摩根士丹利互联网分析师玛丽?米克(Mary Meeker)说，尽管中国的互联网使用正经历爆炸式增长，它采用电子商务的步伐却可能会缓慢得多。米克是第一批预言美国互联网热潮的人士之一。标志着互联网站最新一轮复苏的Web 2.0大会上月在旧金山举行。米克在会上发言指出，中国电子商务不会很快起飞的两个原因是：缺乏高效率送货系统，信用卡尚未普及。
如果说中国电子商务的繁荣仍存在于未来的话，那么其它国家正紧随美国开创的趋势之后，进入这样一个阶段：网上支付商品或娱乐已成主流行为。eBay和亚马逊(Amazon.com)等几家美国大型电子商务公司的快速国际化就是明证，它们主导着网上消费者业务。
这场全球电子商务的新一波浪潮，看来已受到美国模式的重大影响。
“大多数创新将来自全球性企业，来自美国的初创公司，”早期曾资助网景(Netscape)和亚马逊(Amazon)等网络公司的风险资本家约翰?多尔(John Doerr)说。除了它们较长的管理经验和已被证明的业务模式外，新一批美国互联网跨国公司还拥有巨大的财务和技术资源，eBay和雅虎(Yahoo)等公司近期实施的大量并购活动，就体现了这些特点。
多尔先生说，当Web发展到3.0时，情形可能会大不一样。他补充说，到那时，许多先进的理念“很可能”来自美国以外。
考虑到全球各互联网市场的发展方式，这些未来电子商务市场的一些特征，或许已进入我们的视野。
比如在中国，经常聚集在网吧里的网上游戏玩家，正推动着宽带互联网接入的普及。摩根士丹利估计，在中国的2400万互联网订户中，有约1500万是玩游戏的人。
手机看来势将扮演重要角色：中国手机用户数是互联网用户数的3.5倍，相比其它手机扮演重要角色的国家，如日本和德国，中国的比例要高出1倍多。而在美国这一比例仍低于1。这些不同的地域特征，已开始激发接近网上消费者的新方式。
米克女士说：“很多这样的东西已不再产生于美国了。”
约70%的中国互联网使用者还不到30岁，而在美国这一比例仅有30%。随着这一代人年龄增长，他们很有可能置身于电子商务最新潮流的前沿。
