Yahoo Needs To Show Financial Performance Now

According to an eMarketer report released late last year, US digital ad revenues are projected to grow from $42.58 billion in 2013 to $48.09 billion in 2014 and $53.36 billion by 2015. Google is expected to remain the market leader with its 39.9% share last year growing to 40.8% in 2014. Facebook is also building its share from 7.4% to 8.2% this year. But Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), continues to slip and is expected to see its market share fall from 5.8% in 2013 to 5.4% in 2014 and 5.0% in 2015.

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Borderfree Helps American Retailers Expand Internationally

According to eMarketer’s latest report, worldwide business-to-consumer e-commerce is projected to grow 20.1% in 2014 to $1.5 trillion. The report estimates that this year, e-commerce sales from the Asia Pacific region will outpace the American market sales and account for $525.2 billion of the total market. North America’s e-commerce is expected to grow from $431 billion in 2013 to $482 billion this year.

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Q2 Holdings Helping Financial Institutions Move to the Cloud

According to IT Spending in Banking: A North American Perspective, a report published by Celent, US financial institutions were expected to spend nearly $48.9 billion on IT initiatives in 2013. The study found that of this spend, $11.4 billion would be incurred on new initiatives. Banks are increasing their presence online and the new initiative spend is going toward improving their capabilities for online, mobile, tablet, and other self-service capabilities.

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Globoforce Delays Their IPO Plans

According to a Gartner research report, an organization spends nearly 2% of its payroll cost on traditional employee recognition expenses. A study conducted by IDC in 2012 estimated that the North America employee recognition market will grow 8% annually over the period 2011 through 2016. The market was worth $22 billion in 2011 and was projected to reach $32 billion in 2016.

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Paylocity Addressing the Growing HCM Market

According to an IDC research report, the US market for Human Capital Management (HCM) applications and payroll outsourcing services is expected to be worth $22.5 billion this year. Another research report by Aberdeen Group published in 2012 estimated that nearly 38% of HCM related investment was being made in cloud computing initiatives. It is not just the big organizations that are wanting to deploy cloud based offerings, but the smaller organizations are also realizing the benefits of a cloud-based HCM offering.

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Rubicon Project’s Latest IPO

According to a research report by ZenithOptimedia, global ad spend was estimated to grow 3.5% last year to $503 billion. Digital advertising is becoming an increasingly bigger component of the advertising market. US digital advertising is estimated to account for 21.8% of the overall ad spend of $109.7 billion, compared with 19% market share a year ago.

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Nokia Finally Moves to Android

According to a recent Gartner report, worldwide mobile phone sales excluding the smartphone segment grew 3.5% last year to 1.8 billion units. During the fourth quarter of 2013, mobile phone sales grew 3.9% to 490.3 million units. Samsung remains the market leader with a 24.6% market share and 444.4 million units in 2013 compared with 384.6 million units a year ago. Nokia is a distant second player with 250.8 million units sold in 2013. However, Nokia’s phone sales have fallen significantly from 333.9 million units reported in 2012.

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BlackBerry’s Struggles See No End

According to an IDC research report, smartphones powered by Android OS grew from 69% in 2012 to 78.6% in 2013, eating into the share of iOS devices. iOS-based phone sales fell from 18.7% to 15.2% and BlackBerry phones fell from 4.5% a year ago to 1.9% in 2013.

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Mobile Messaging Apps: Kik Interactive

Besides Asia-based mobile messaging apps like WeChat and LINE, there are a few other players in the North American market as well who have managed to amass a substantial user base along with a sizeable revenue model. One such player is Canada-based Kik Interactive.

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Mobile Messaging Apps: KakaoTalk

As I mentioned earlier, the preferred mobile messaging app varies across geographies. Facebook and WhatsApp are universal leaders in the Western markets, but the Orient is still dominated by home grown players. Here is a quick review of KakaoTalk, another Asian company making it big in the market. After capturing the South Korean market, KakaoTalk is working on expanding their market presence and is said to be preparing for an IPO.

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