Many analysts see bigger importance ultimately in businesses in which the transaction is electronic in both directions. A British company named Crunch Music Ltd. is a pioneer in this field. To date, its customers include people in the United States, Ireland, Germany, Hungary and Japan, among other countries, paying by credit card. The Internet itself is one of the best ways of distributing to the whole planet. Many analysts see the music business growing fast, providing that more and more people get high-speed Internet connections that allow quick downloads.
Consumer services are the most visible.
Cisco Systems Inc., the huge California-based manufacturer of hardware for Internet companies, is a case in point. Ninety-two percent of its orders from South America now arrive electronically, as faraway customers at screens type in specifications of the systems they want, working out details of configuration with special software. The orders are transmitted across the Internet, and the products are built to order, then loaded aboard jets and sent down south. Sue Stemel, director of Internet commerce information technology at Cisco, says that ordering electrically, with software tools guiding their decisions, helps people abroad make difficult orders correctly the first time. And it generally means the product goes out the door to them about a week sooner.