Just how much business electronic commerce currently drums up or its potential to do so remains a mystery. Nevertheless, there are those who have thrown figures in the ring, the range from $1.24bn now to a high of more than $150bn by 2000. Projected figures for the future are astonishing considering research shows only two million people worldwide have used the Internet in some way to aid in a transaction. International Data Corp predicts Web revenues will exceed $150bn in 2000 within the US, while Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research put a combined business-to-business commerce, consumer retail, and financial services at about $1.3bn now with growth potential at about $95bn by 2000. Scott Smith, an analyst with Jupiter Communications Inc, guesstimates current electronic commerce at $1.24bn in sales this year increasing to $7.3bn by 2000. Figures vary depending on what is actually considered electronic commerce; whether it’s actual purchases made online, every Automatic Teller Machine card use, or Web advertisements that entice someone to call or go to a store to make a purchase. With all these figures floating around it’s apparent nobody actually knows how big, or small, electronic commerce is or will be. Until there are standard definitions and technology to measure Internet revenue, the actual figures will be left lingering in Cyberspace.
