An International Data Corporation (IDC) study in 1998 was placing Romania on the bottom position among the CEE countries in terms of IT-related expenses estimated for 2000, both per capita and as value. Some analysts felt IDC's forecast was rather pessimistic, but it proved right three years later.
A study concluded by Romania-based Roland Berger & Partner SRL in December 2000, showed that, two years after IDC's forecast, Romania was still the last on the IT and telecommunications market in a region including Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Subsequently, Roland Berger in late 2000 was estimating that Romania had only 25 computers per 1000 inhabitants, as well as 33 Internet users, 173 fixed telephony lines and 90 mobile phones.
The comparison with the other countries no longer requires any explanations, considering that Hungary and the Czech Republic rank first, each of them registering more than 100 PCs, some 90 websurfers, more than 375 fixed telephony lines and 250 mobile phones per 1000 people.
Last year, both Hungary and the Czech Republic went beyond the 1 million owned PCs threshold (1.4 million and 1.7 million respectively). The study estimates that Romania will barely reach 616,000 computers in 2001, 685,000 in 2002 and 750,000 in 2003. The good news, though, comes from the Internet and mobile telephony, but only when taking dynamics into consideration.
Of the four countries in the study, Romania has the fastest development pace in terms of the number of Internet users (83%) and the number of mobile phones (168%). The study estimates Romania will have 1.2 million websurfers and 3.6 million mobile phones in 2001.
By the end of this year, the Czech Republic will have 1.5 million websurfers and 3.399 million cellulars, while Hungary registers 1.3 million websurfers and 3.03 million mobile phones.
The e-commerce chapter in the Roland Berger Report highlights the huge gap between Romania and the other three countries considered once more.
Whereas the Czech Republic has some 1,900 companies selling products over the Internet, the number of virtual stores in Romania barely reaches 30 and no one has managed to figure out how much Romanians are spending online yet.
At the same time, analysts estimate that $5.78 million were spent on business-to-consumer transactions in the Czech Republic last year, while $1.45 million were spent for the same purpose in Hungary.
The e-commerce market of the four countries in 2000 was estimated at some $600 million by Roland Berger & Partner analysts, 99% of which accounts for the business-to-business market.
On the other hand, the business-to-consumer transactions volume will register the highest increase over the next three years (more than 170% compared with 50% in B2B).
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