Online Travel Consolidating Rapidly

The online travel industry is seeing rapid consolidation as Priceline and Expedia look to dominate the industry in the face of competition from new rivals like Google. While Priceline is expanding into new areas with acquisitions like OpenTable, Expedia has been on an acquisition spree to gain scale.

Priceline’s Financials

Priceline’s (NASDAQ: PCLN) second quarter revenues grew 7.4% over the year to $2.28 billion, close to the analyst estimate of $2.29 billion. Gross travel bookings for the quarter increased 10.5% to $14.96 billion. EPS was $12.45 versus $12.51 a year ago and analyst estimate of $11.85.
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India Becomes a Key Center for Analytics Outsourcing

Across the globe, enterprises are making huge investments for leveraging data analytics tools and technologies to provide customized offerings and improved digital engagement with customers. By 2018, the market for data analytics is expected to be worth $48.3 billion. Enterprises are now increasingly outsourcing the data analytics processes to less expensive locations like India. According to TechNavio, the Global Data Analytics Outsourcing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 30.54% over the period 2014-2019. >>>

Carnival in the Cloud: Aria Helps Recurring Revenue Companies Bill

According to market reports, companies with businesses focused on recurring revenue models, such as those of cloud technologies,  telecom, digital entertainment, and even retail contribute nearly $300 billion to the global economy. There is a growing demand of cloud-based billing services especially tailored for these companies. Recent market reports suggest that the cloud-based billing market will be a $9.5 billion market by the year 2018.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Mode Media Takes on Video Streaming

It is rare to see an Internet company that has impressive user metrics for over a decade and has still not decided to go public. One such company is a content curator and Billion Dollar Unicorn club hopeful Mode Media, formerly known as Glam Media.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Will IBM Acquire FireEye?

According to Gartner, the global spending on IT security is projected to grow 8.2% this year to $77 billion. Gartner expects this spend to grow to $101 billion by the year 2018. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member FireEye (Nasdaq: FEYE) is already benefiting from this growth.

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Jive Software Continues to Tumble

According to a ReportsnReports research report, the global enterprise social software market is projected to grow 11.3% annually from $4.77 billion in 2014 to $8.14 billion in 2019. But despite a strong industry growth rate,  Billion Dollar Unicorn club hopeful Jive Software (Nasdaq: JIVE) is feeling the pressures of the stock exchange. The stock market has been unrelenting in its treatment of the loss-making business model, causing Jive to implode.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Lufax May be Risky, But Valuations Remain Lofty

According to a BusinessInsider report on the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending industry, the total loans generated by P2P lenders in the US grew 128% to $6.6 billion in 2014. The US is the biggest P2P lending market in the world in terms of loan volume, but other countries are catching up. In 2014, Europe grew 144% in P2P loan volume to $3.9 billion. China is not to be left far behind as is evident from the Billion Dollar Unicorn status of Chinese P2P lending firm Lufax.

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Alibaba Fails to Deliver – Yet Again

Last week, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) announced rather disappointing second quarter results. Growth has slowed down significantly and the stock has already fallen more than 35% since its post IPO peak. Alibaba is investing into several growth strategies, hoping one of them will pay off.

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Apple Music Threatens Spotify and Pandora

According to an IFPI report on the global music industry, the digital music industry is estimated to have grown 7% over the year to $6.9 billion in 2014. Digital music accounted for 46% of all global music sales. Another report by TechNavio estimates the digital music streaming market to grow 12% over the next four years. Given the high growth rates for the industry, it is little wonder that the giants are stepping into the game. >>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Etsy Continues to Fumble

I have repeatedly spoken about Billion Dollar Unicorns who have entered the club due to the frenzied investments by VCs who partake in initial funding rounds at spectacular valuations. Some of these companies are not able to address the expectation of a public company and implode when listed on the stock exchanges. One such instance is that of niche e-commerce player Etsy (NASDAQ: ETSY), which appears to be stuck in a bit of a rut. Recent disappointing quarterly results accompanied with continuing absence of profits had sent the stock tumbling to below list price levels. As competition in the niche space increases, Etsy will have tougher battles to fight in the next few months.

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