Gartner predicts an eight-fold increase in the worldwide e-business services industry with revenues rising from $11.6 billion (year-ended 1998) to $99.3 billion by the year 2003. However, while the CAGR recorded in the Asia Pacific region will be the highest at over 51 per cent, the region's share in the worldwide market is likely to be a mere 7.2 per cent in 2003."The high CAGR level recorded for the Asia-Pacific region will be mainly due to the fact that the e-business market in this region is still in the process of maturing and that the adoption of these services within organizations is on the increase," explained Bob Hayward, senior vice-president, operations, Gartner. On the issue of the rapid proliferation of Internet companies, Hayward said: "Just because someone appears to be winning today, doesn't mean they will be around tomorrow.

The normal life cycle demands that some companies fall by the wayside while others emerge winners, many specialist skills from many vertical markets are needed to make Internet businessnes successful". Gartner estimates that nine out of 10 dotcoms will fail to achieve their targets. "This doesn't mean that all nine will go bankrupt, some may get acquired, others may just become zombies, just one out of 10 will actually succeed."

Hayward stressed that companies which sourced "smart money"-basically: team up with investors who provide networking or the skill to take your company successfully to the capital markets-stood a much better chance of survival than companies which went to the public for money. "Public money is dumb money, on the other hand VC-backed money could ensure success for the company" said Hayward. "There are likely to be a larger number of listed technology failures and fewer of VC backed ones".

Dwelling on B2C e-commerce in India, Hayward said that just 2.2 per cent of Internet users had done any kind of B2C commerce in India. Additionally, he said that about a fifth of the non-buyers had expressed an interest to get online. The company studied a sample base of 3,000 users across seven Indian metros for the B2C e-commerce survey.