Electronic Arts Preparing for Next-Gen Console Market

Gaming aficionados have been waiting for this holiday season when both Microsoft and Sony released their next-gen consoles. XBox One and PS 4 are touted to be the biggest upgrades for the gaming console market and are being called the next-gen consoles. These machines come equipped with higher processing power and memory, making them capable of delivering faster and improved gaming action. But these consoles can be successful only if gaming publishers develop relevant games. For now, publisher Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA) seems to be prepared to handle this challenge.

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OpenTable Prepares to Battle Apple

Recently, the restaurant technology market made news when none other than the tech giant Apple filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a new ordering and reservation system that could work with their products. Apple’s patent application covers systems, methods, and storage media that will help with making reservations and maintaining a wait list for a resource at a restaurant. Essentially, that is what OpenTable (Nasdaq: OPEN) does for a living and as a reaction, the company’s stock did take a bit of a tumble from the two-year high it had touched after the announcement of its Q3 results.

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Zulily’s Successful IPO

According to the Euromonitor, the North American retail market was worth $3.1 trillion last year with online sales accounting for $183 billion of the retail sales. The researcher estimates that the North American online retail market will grow 14.5% annually to $360 billion by 2017. Within the online retail sales market, flash sales are an upcoming trend, but not all of them are as successful as the mom-focused site, Zulily.

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Adobe Counting on Digital Marketing Growth

In a survey of 253 marketers for U.S.-based companies earning more than $500 million in annual revenues, Gartner found that digital marketing budgets accounted for 2.5% of their revenues. These marketers were looking to increase their digital marketing budgets for this year to 9% of revenues. Digital publishing company Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) is focusing on this digital marketing growth.

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Athenahealth Counting on Product Launches

According to a recent report, US EMR Market Outlook to 2017, the electronic medical records (EMR) market is project to grow 15% annually over 2013-2017. Growth will be driven by both private and public players as they continue to invest in services such as the need to adhere to the Meaningful Use Stage 2 (MU2). EMR hardware accounts for 51% of the market, and EMR services and software account for the remaining share. EMR leader athenahealth recently reported healthy quarterly results although guidance was less rosy. >>>

Privacy Debate May Hurt Palantir

According to a report by research firm MarketsandMarkets, the global big data market is projected to grow 26% annually from $14.87 billion this year to $46.34 billion by 2018. The report also estimates that the predictive analytics market is projected to grow 25% annually from $1.7 billion in 2013 to $5.24 billion in 2018.

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Online Travel Sites Growing as Usual

According to the U.S. Commerce Department, international travel to the country is projected to grow nearly 4% annually from 2013 through 2017. The fastest growth is expected from visitors from China, Saudi Arabia, and the Russian Federation. The World Travel Monitor expects global travel to grow 2-3% this year, with Asia-Pacific seeing the strongest growth. Online travel companies are expanding their service offerings to ensure that they capture a bigger share of this recovering market.

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Still No Sign of Revenue at Snapchat

A recent report published by researcher Ovum, Social Messaging 2014 Trends to Watch, projects the number of messages exchanged on social messaging apps to grow more than 2.5 times next year from 27.5 trillion to 71.5 trillion by the end of 2014. The growth in social messaging will be driven by the adoption and availability of affordable smartphones and mobile broadband penetration in emerging markets.

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MercadoLibre Continues to Deliver Strong Growth

According to research by Visa, e-commerce sales in Latin America are projected to be more than $69 billion this year. Sales are projected to grow to more than $100 billion by the end of the next year. Latin America is the fifth largest e-commerce market in the world.

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Concur: A Good Model, But Still No Profits

The latest report by Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), estimates worldwide business travel spending to grow 5.4% this year to $1.12 trillion. This growth is expected to increase in the coming years, with the market projected to grow 7.5% annually to $1.50 trillion by 2017.  Travel expense management services provider Concur (Nasdaq:CNQR) is also seeing the business travel market grow.

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