Internet market opportunities

The [img_assist|nid=8316|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=100]European Union (EU) expects its Internet sales to increase 120% by 2010 as compared to the yearly sales in 2007. Online sales of 15 old EU states as well as Switzerland and Norway in 2007 raised 40% on an annual basis which amounted to €124 billion.

The biggest Internet sales market is the UK. Its annual sales in 2007 accounted for €37 billion. The second is the German market which is expected to grow up to €51.3 billion by 2010. The leading position in the world belongs to the USA where online sales reached €95 billion in 2007. However by 2010 the USA is predicted to be overcome by China where online sales are expected to achieve €180 billion by the year mentioned. Overall sales revenue in the world is supposed to increase up to €740 billion by 2010.

France has only 3% of Internet users interested in online supermarket shopping and Britain registers 16% of Internet users making supermarket purchases online.

As per research data online sales in the EU have a rapid growth which is attributed to a large number of customers using social networking websites as they are more often to visit eCommerce sites. In June 2007 alone 114 million adult users visited such websites as Facebook or MySpace.

One more factor that can promote online sales is tridimensional e-market in the online game ‘Second Life’. It has a great potential and may become ‘massive’ as at present time it is being massively invested by Google, Microsoft, Sun and IBM.