Make the most or you're toast

Intel made its first appearance at UK Internet World and issued a warning

Internet correspondent Chris Nuttall reports from UK - Spring Internet World 98.

Intel has warned British companies they face ruin if they are slow to take advantage of the vast new markets being opened up by the Internet.

Intel dominates the business of selling the processors that power computers. But its chairman Andy Grove said recently that Intel would be toast without the Internet.

Now the company has issued the same warning to British businessmen. Ron Whittier, its senior vice president and General Manager of its Content Group, said in a keynote speech at the Internet World conference and exhibition in London that E-business was growing exponentially in Europe and America.

Ron Whittier: "No Internet, no future"

Afterwards he told BBC News online: "You're completely disadvantaged if you're not doing business on the Internet."

"That doesn't mean you have to do all of your business on the Internet, but certainly from the standpoint of having a presence and getting connected to a whole customer set that you cannot touch without being on the Internet, [that] is absolutely essential.

"So I think businesses that are not on the Internet are doomed if they don't get there, and get there in in a hurry."

It all adds up

Intel produced statistics at the show predicting a staggering 137% compound annual growth rate in Western European Internet commerce between 1996 and 2001.

Global revenues from Web-based transactions would grow from $2.7bn to $1049bn over the same period, according to the 1997 Active Media report.

Seventeen per cent of British businesses are currently buying and seling over the Internet, according to International Data Corporation estimates, and this should grow to over 30% within a year.

But Britain is falling well behind the United States in doing business over the Internet and is beginning to lose ground to closer competitors such as France, Germany, Sweden and the Benelux countries.

Intel is making its first appearance at Internet World, the UK's biggest exhibition and conference of its kind. The organisers have already called on British companies to emerge from the "Dark Ages" and adopt the Internet as a means of doing business.