e-Business Race

New Zealand comes 20th in the global e-business race, according to the second edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit/Pyramid Research e-readiness rankings.
The highest places go to the US, Australia, the UK and Canada.
The US scores first predictably enough, but surprises were that Australia elbows aside host of richer countries for second place, with the UK and Canada not far behind.
Brain vs Brawn
As the rankings indicate, the world’s best e-business players are not necessarily the largest – or richest economies.
“Our rankings show how the Internet is producing new centres of excellence; look at Australia and Scandinavia,” says Daniel Franklin, editorial director of the EIU. In race that rewards innovation and entrepreneurship, Japan, despite its achievements in mobile telephony merits only disappointing 18th place, behind Taiwan. Meanwhile broadband pioneer South Korea outscores technology-complacent Italy.
“Our new rankings show that many countries are making progress in building the foundations for web-enabled global marketplace, although failure to embrace the Internet may push some developing economies further behind,” says Lou Celi, managing director of EIU Electronic.
The new rankings are measure of how countries around the world are faring with the Internet.
E-readiness means the extent to which country is promoting internet-based commercial opportunities.
This spans range of factors from telecoms to the security of credit card transactions and the computer literacy of the population.