Big chunks of the revenues of newspapers traditionally came from the verticals (Jobs, Classifieds, Personals, Real Estate, Cars, Travel, Events, Reviews). With the popularity of the online services ascending, and with huge investments made in each of those categories, the newspaper industry has been suffering, as ad dollars systematically flow out of print, and onto
Last week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that online ad sales rose 32% to a record $4.8 billion in the last quarter. That would put the estimated run rate at about $20-25 Billion for the year 2007. The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers announced that Internet advertising revenues for 2006 are estimated at $16.8 billion,
Last night, I started publishing an interview with Jerry Rawls, CoFounder and CEO of Finisar (FNSR), an fiber optics components leader that has gone through tremendous turmoil in its relatively long history. Remember, fiber optics, at one time, was a very hot market. Numerous startups got funded, massive amounts of venture money went down those
On April 10, 2005, almost immediately after I started this blog, I had written a piece called Microsoft’s Two Should-Be Acquisition Candidates, from the point of view of addressing the growth trends in the SME markets. The two candidates were: Autodesk (ADSK) and PayChex (PAYX). I have to pay close attention to Microsoft, since my
We’ve had a lot of discussion on this forum about why there are no Technology Product Companies in India, and why such companies are needed. Let’s take a look at a company that is selling lots of technology products in India, and intends to sell even more: SAP. Recently, the Economic Times reported about SAP’s
Navteq is an interesting company that “provides digital map information, and related software and services for use in various navigation, mapping, and geographic-related applications, including products and services that provide maps, driving directions, turn-by-turn route guidance, fleet management and tracking, and geographic information systems. The company offers these products and services to end users by
I wrote two pieces recently discussing potential turnaround strategies for both Dell and Palm. :: The world is moving to a place where the laptop needs to become much more than just a laptop. An integrated mobile device is in the cards, that is the combo PC-Phone-Music Box. May be, even Camera. Dell needs to
On a few occasions, recently, the topic of Cisco’s inevitable lay-offs in Silicon Valley came up. It is true, that Cisco is a FAT company, with a very large (and expensive) workforce in the valley. However, the big new market opportunities in front of Cisco are all in the emerging, developing markets, and there, the