A boom in the popularity of online shopping will see Hong Kong consumers spending more than $6 billion a year on the Web by 2002, Internet giant Yahoo! said yesterday.
Growing confidence in Internet security would encourage people to do more of their shopping on the Web, soaring to six times the present rate within two years, the company said.
Yahoo! Hong Kong general manager Alfred Tsoi was speaking after the launch of an SAR-based cyber shopping mall featuring local stores such as Wellcome and Giordano.
He said Singapore-based information-technology research company International Data Corporation predicted online spending in Hong Kong would rise to US$806 million (HK$6.2 billion) a year in 2002, six times the US$130 million spent by local Net surfers last year.
Figures from the Office of the Telecommunications Authority show Internet use in Hong Kong has tripled in the past two years, with every resident now spending an average of seven minutes a day online.
Analysts say the growing number of Chinese-language Web sites and the expected boom in connections expected to come with Web-compatible mobile phones will mean local Net use could soon overtake that in cities such as New York and London. But while locals are warming up to logging on, they are still reluctant to buy from the Web.
