I ve got some numbers here that talk about the United States adoption rate. Worldwide we ve got about 150 million people who are using the Internet now on a regular basis, and that s up from 3 million just four years before that. So it s not only incredible in terms of what it means, but the speed that it s happening at is quite incredible. And this is all happening without some of the advances that are coming up in the next few years, things like speech recognition that will make these devices even easier to work with. And so it s really explosive, and it does have a role to play in trade.
Electronic commerce is just one of the many applications.
But the press now is really focused on electronic commerce, because that s one of the few ways people have proven they can make money on this new phenomenon. They have over six million customers. Their sales have been growing at quite unbelievable rates. And so they re doing a great business, making books and other products easily accessible to people around the world. Electronic commerce, really there s no end in sight.