SUMMARY OF AUSTRALIAN MARKET - Rated (Per-Captita) as one of the fastest populations to adopt new technology. Not overall supportive of their own products and services - tendency to see imports as being of superior quality. A lot of work needs to be done with both the public and press perception of shareware. While there is a reasonable acceptance it is often seen as being of lesser quality to "Shelfware".

LANGUAGE - English is spoken by almost all Australians, there is a strong preference for Australian English - which has tended to become a mixture of UK English and US English peppered with colloquialisms. The second most prevalent language would be Greek and Italian.

CURRENCY - Australian Dollars. Exchange rates tend to make US Dollar purchases unatractive. Very little support from the banking sector for e-commerce and where it exists it is prohibitively expensive. Tend to be quite unaware of the existance of, and relative exchange rates for, foreign currencies and will assume that a US dollars price is the same in Australian Dollars.

HOLIDAYS - The following list of holidays affect normal business operations- all other holidays are typically observed on Sundays, or do not heavily impact business operations for the whole country.. Full Holidays
January 1 - New Years Day
January 26th - Australia Day
March 25 - ANZAC Day Easter - Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday
June 26 - Queens Birthday
First Tuesay of November - Melbourne Cup Day
December 25 - Christmas
December 26 - Boxing Day

A plethora of state based holidays (Melb Cup Day is an exception as it tends to affect the whole nation at least for part of the day).

COMMON FORMS OF ACCEPTED PAYMENT - The following are common forms of payment accepted in the Australia. Cash Credit Cards - Visa, MasterCard, Bank Card and American Express Cheques (Checks) - Corporate Cheques, Bank Cheques, Money Orders Purchase Orders - Wire Transfers - (Very expensive)

TAXES - Each State's laws may vary. All products sold within Australia to Australians are subject to the GST (Goods and Services Tax). The impact of this on E-Commerce is still pretty much undefined. Australian

BUSINESS LINKS - Links that are business related Australian Tax Office (ATO) http://www.ato.gov.au Australian

SHAREWARE SITES - Very few. Currently - http://www.aquarian.com

DOMAINS - Below are the most common domain extensions

com.au (company) - by far the most popular extension.
only available to ASC *registered* Australian business.
.net.au (networks) - only for ISP's
.org.au (organizations) - ASC registered non-profit only
.edu.au (educational) - reserved for educational institutions only

This page was created and is credited to Scott Kane of Micronexus Software Australia