Has Zynga Lost its Charm?

According to the 2014 Global Games Market Report by Newzoo, global game revenues are projected to grow 8% in 2014 to $81.5 billion. The market will be dominated by growth in the Asia Pacific and Latin America regions. Asia Pacific revenues will see their share increase from 42% in 2013 to 45% this year. Latin-America’s shares will grow 14% and will account for $3.3 billion revenues. The growth in these markets is attributed to improving Internet penetration and an increasing adoption of mobile devices in the regions. However, Zynga continues to struggle. >>>

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Yahoo’s Aimless Shopping Spree Continues

For the recently ended quarter, Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), surprisingly, reported results that beat the market’s expectations. Since Ms. Mayer took over as the CEO of Yahoo, she has been focusing on building Yahoo through acquisitions. Most of their acquisitions are focused on adding talent and the market remains puzzled about their ability to monetize these deals. Things could become bleaker as Yahoo is expected to step up its already high speed acquisition spree with the $5 billion it got from the sale of Alibaba’s stock.

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LinkedIn Builds A Significant Media Business

According to an eMarketer report published earlier this year, the US social network ad revenues are projected to grow 31% this year to $5.82 billion. Social networking giant Facebook remains the advertising leader with an estimated $3.95 billion in revenues. Twitter is a distant second with ad revenues from the US growing 88% this year to $790.5 million. Professional network LinkedIn is expected to be the third largest player with US ad revenues growing 40% to $327 million. eMarketer expects LinkedIn’s ad revenues to grow 38% next year to $450.2 million.

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Facebook Has No Plans of Holding Back on Investments

According to a MarketsnMarkets report on Cross-Platform & Mobile Advertising Market, the global mobile advertising market is projected to grow 38% annually over the five-year period from 2013 through 2018. The industry is projected to grow from $15.13 billion in 2013 to $76.57 billion in 2018. The growth is driven by the emerging markets of Middle East, Africa, and Latin America and is attributed to the continued increase of smartphone usage and the increased integration of cross-device platforms that targets audiences on multiple devices such as desktops and mobile devices.

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Apple: Three Years After Steve Jobs

Tim Cook continues to put his stamp on Apple. His recent efforts for Apple have helped the stock reach record highs. In his own words, Apple recorded the “biggest iPhone launch ever with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus” and is getting ready for the holiday quarter with its “strongest product lineup ever.”

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Microsoft Firing on All Cylinders

According to Gartner, PC shipments in the third quarter this year fell 0.5% over the year even as there was growth in Western Europe and North America. IDC had a worse estimate as they saw PC shipments fall 1.7% over the year. Declining PC sales are a continuing catalyst for Microsoft to switch to other revenue sources.

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Apptio is Improving Offerings

According to Gartner, the worldwide IT operations management software revenue grew 4.8% over the year to $18 billion in 2012. The market was dominated by five key vendors, IBM, CA Technologies, BMC Software, Microsoft, and HP that accounted for 55% of the market share. But the smaller vendors are catching up. Overall the top five vendors reported a modest 0.6% growth over the year while all the other vendors accounted for a growth of 10% over the year.

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Actifio – The Billion Dollar Club Member

According to a report by Signals and Systems Telecom, the global market for Big Data-related hardware, software and professional services is expected to be worth $30 billion this year. The researcher estimates the industry to grow 17% annually over the next six years to be worth $76 billion by the year 2020.

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Oracle’s Future Cloud Acquisitions: Some Predictions

Earlier this summer, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced the $5.3 billion acquisition of MICROS, a point of sale system for the restaurant, hospitality, and specialty retail stores industry. Analysts believed that this was just the beginning of many more acquisitions to come as they projected Oracle to spend nearly $15 billion-$20 billion in the next two years on inorganic growth. During the recently ended quarter, Oracle continued to make other smaller acquisitions to grow their presence within the cloud and software segments.

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Netflix Not Worried by Streaming Competitors

A couple of years ago, online video streaming service Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) announced price increases. However, in face of serious customer lashback and a falling stock price, Netflix’s management recalled their price hike. Recently, they tried the move again, raising prices for new customers by nearly a dollar a month. This time round, they were counting on original content and an international market to support the price increase. The recent price hike has not suffered the earlier repercussions, but the market is still wary because the recent quarter saw a slowing down of new customer additions and a weaker forecast for the current quarter.

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