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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Investors not Happy with Amazon’s Investments

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) is trying several initiatives to keep the market interested in their stock, but continuing losses are leading to its “worst annual stock decline since 2008”. The stock has already fallen 22% since the beginning of the year.

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eBay Spinning Off PayPal, Finally!

Online retailer eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) finally bit the bullet and took the call on spinning off their payments unit PayPal. The decision has already led to Board battles and now the resignation of VC Marc Andreessen from the Board.

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High Speed Data Center Switch Equipment Delivered by Arista Networks

According to a Crehan Research report, the continuing decline of costs for high speed Data Center Switches will lead to an increased adoption of these switches by the market. The researcher estimates that the Ethernet data center switch market will be worth $14 billion in 2018. The growth is expected to be driven by the continuing adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet for data center server access, and 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet for data center uplink, aggregation, and core deployments. Crehan Research believes that 10 Gigabit Ethernet will soon become the biggest contributor to the Ethernet Switch shipments.

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Sitecore – Denmark’s Highly Successful Tech Company

According to an IDC report, the global market for online content management grew 8.7% to $5.8 billion in 2013. The market was dominated by IBM, which accounted for 16% of the market’s share. OpenText came in second with 9% market share followed by Microsoft’s 7% share. IDC believes that while the industry is dominated by the top 3 vendors who account for more than a third of the total market, other smaller vendors have also been able to deliver very strong growth.

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