The manufacturing, media and banking sectors are the leading spenders in the $124bn US internet economy, according to research by International Data Corp. Manufacturers of hard goods are far and away leading the spending in 1998, with an estimated $23bn being invested by that industry segment in web applications for extranet, intranets, and commerce sites. Next among the top industries were communications/media and banking, which will each spend just over $15bn this year. Rounding out the top five were services, at $10.9bn, process manufacturing at $10bn, and $8.4bn for the retail sector. The furthest behind among the 18 industry groups tracked by IDC were government and education with less than $2bn in spending each. IDC’s model takes into account spending for products, services, and internal staff to extend their businesses using internet technologies. It plans to announce its overall findings about the worldwide internet economy at its Internet Executive Forum in San Jose next month. The research firm projects that the US internet economy – the combination of spending to build web businesses and applications, combined with the revenue from products and services sold over the internet – to grow from $124bn in 1998 to $518bn in 2002. IDC said its research on the subject is based on an analysis of IT budgets across major industries, as well as non-IT budget technology spending.
