The Yellow Pages' Internet telephone directory will generate at least half of the phone book publisher's revenues within five years, according to Telecom Directories.
Jacques Lanthier, its director of operations, said the growth of its Internet venture - begun three years ago - has far outstripped that of the printed telephone books.
'If you had asked me five years ago what the Internet was, I would have said 'what's that?', but now it's growing so fast,' he said.
Telecom Directories - a joint venture between Bell Canada and Hongkong Telecom - publishes the local telephone directory guides.
Beginning in January, it will, for the first time, also be publishing the local Yellow Pages business directory in Chinese in a completely separate book.
'There's a need to respond to the population in a language they can understand - for reasons of history, we had never before published a Chinese-language business directory,' he said.
Partly because of the lack of a Chinese language publication, Yellow Pages' usage - one of the key benchmarks of a directory's success - has been significantly lower in Hong Kong than overseas.