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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Credit Karma Sees Strong Revenue Growth, No Profit Yet

A recent IBISWorld research saw the revenues of US consumer credit scoring agencies grow 5% annually over the period 2009 through 2014 to be worth $11 billion this year. The market is dominated by the three key credit score providers – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Today, US consumers have nearly $13 trillion in outstanding debt and there is a rising wave of online consumer financial services providers flooding the market to help consumers manage this debt.

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Automattic Wants to Take-Over the Web

The interest in social blog sites, along with their valuations, has been growing rapidly. Last year, Yahoo acquired social blog site Tumblr for a whopping $1.16 billion. More recently, Automattic, the company that powers WordPress.com raised funds at a valuation of $1.16 billion as well. Here is a brief overview of how they have done so far.

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Squarespace’s Silent Growth

According to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union, by the end of the current year, nearly 3 billion people or 44% of the world’s households will have access to the Internet. Internet penetration is understandably the highest in the developed regions of America and Europe at 66% and 75% respectively. While three quarter of the total users will be from developed countries, two-thirds will come from the developing world as infrastructure advancements continue in other regions.

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Electronic Arts Delivers on Next Gen Consoles

According to Gartner, the global video game industry is estimated to be worth $93 billion in 2013, growing from $79 billion in 2012. Gartner believes that the industry, which includes video game console hardware and software, online, mobile, and PC games, will grow to $111 billion by 2015. Growth is expected to be driven by the mobile games industry, which is projected to grow to $22 billion by 2015 from $13 billion in 2013. During the same period, video game console revenues are expected to grow to $55 billion from $44 billion in 2013 and PC games are projected to grow to $21.6 billion from $17.7 billion in 2013. Only the handheld game sales will fall to $12.4 billion in 2015 from $18 billion last year.

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