LeapFrog Getting Into Wearables

According to an NPD Group research released earlier this year, retail sales of toys in the US fell 1% in 2013. Even in the last quarter of the year, despite a 4% increase registered during the week of Black Friday and  a 24% growth registered in sales during Cyber Monday last year, overall toy sales fell 1% over the  year. The biggest increase in toy sales was reported in the Youth Electronics segment which reported an 18% increase.

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Flipkart Leads India’s e-Commerce Market, Acquires Myntra

Forrester estimates the Indian e-commerce market to be worth $13 billion last year. The Indian e-commerce market was dominated by travel which accounts for 70% of consumer e-commerce transactions. But retail is catching up as well. Forrester’s report estimates online retail sales to be worth $1.6 billion last year. Analysts estimate the online retail market to grow to $3.1 billion during this year and to grow seven times in the next five years.

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HP’s Turnaround Now Focusing on the Cloud

According to Gartner’s quarterly report, during the first quarter of 2014, Worldwide PC shipments fell 1.7% over the year to 76.6 million units. The market was led by Lenovo, which saw PC shipments grow 10.9% over the year to 12.9 million units. HP was the second largest vendor growing 4.1% over the year to ship 12.2 million units and claiming 16% of the market.

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Marketo Should Roll-Up Their Category, Acquire On24

Earlier this year, Experian Marketing Services released their 2013 Email Marketing Study. The report found that personalized promotional emails had a 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates. In fact, the study claims that personalized promotional emails improved transaction rates and revenue per email by six times compared with non-personalized emails.

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Salesforce Continues on Growth Track

According to the recently released Gartner report, Market Share Analysis: Customer Relationship Management Software, Worldwide, 2013, the global CRM market grew 14% over the year to $20.4 billion last year. The researcher found that 41% of the CRM systems sold last year were SaaS-based offerings and Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) led the market with a 16.1% market share. SAP was a distant second with 13% market share followed by Oracle’s 10% share.

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IBM On Acquisition Spree

According to Gartner’s latest report on Global IT spending, economic recovery across the world is helping improve worldwide IT spending which is now projected to grow 3.2% this year to $3.8 trillion. Gartner expects a significant recovery in the Devices Market as global spending will grow 4.4% to $689 billion compared with a 1.4% decline reported a year ago. Similarly spending on Data Center Services is expected to improve 2.3% to $143 billion compared with the 0.2% decline a year ago and spending on Telecom Services will improve 1.3% to $1.66 billion from the 0.5% decline last year. Enterprise Software market will see the strongest growth at 6.9% to $320 billion followed by a 4.6% improvement in IT Services spending growing to $964 billion.

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Online Travel Companies Seek Growth in International

According to an eMarketer report, growth in online travel sales will be driven by the increasing adoption of digital tools by emerging markets. The researcher expects only three countries to see double digit growth in online travel sales by 2017. China is expected to lead the market with 20% growth in 2017 followed by Italy’s 11.5% and India’s 11.1%. In the mature market of the U.S., online travel sales are projected to grow 5.9% annually over the period 2012 through 2017. Online travel sites are thus focusing their presence in international markets.

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Jasper Technologies – Enabler of the Internet of Things

Not only has the Internet penetrated the services we use, but it is rapidly becoming a part of our devices as well. Known as the Internet of Things (IoT), today the Internet is being used to access almost everything from mobile phones to wearable devices, washing machines, house lights, and other such appliances. According to a Cisco report, last year, there were 13 billion devices that could connect to the Internet. Cisco expects that number to go to 50 billion by 2020. Gartner has a more conservative estimate of 26 billion connected devices by 2020. >>>

Rakuten – the Alibaba of Japan

According to a recent report released by Forrester, e-commerce sales in the markets of China, Japan, South Korea, India, and Australia will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.6% to $858 billion in 2018. The report predicts that growth rate in the developed markets of Japan will be comparatively slower at 10%. Japan’s online retail sales accounted for revenue of $59 billion in 2013. That number is projected to grow to $96 billion in 2018.

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Yelp vs. OpenTable

Today there is a growing importance of online review sites in the consumer decision making process. A Merchant Warehouse infographic released last year revealed that 72% of consumers trusted online reviews for their decisions. The study found that 90% of the visitors to online review site Yelp (NYSE: YELP) were influenced by the reviews they found on the site. Another research by BCG reported that businesses who made use of their Yelp accounts saw an average increase of $8,000 in annual revenues.

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