Rocket Fuel’s IPO Soars

According to eMarketer’s latest report, digital ad spending in the US is expected to grow 15% over the year to $42.26 billion this year. Digital advertising will account for 25% of total media ad spending this year. Digital ad spending is projected to grow to $61.35 billion by 2017. This growth in spending is attributed to the increased adoption of mobile advertising.

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How Can Salesforce.com Make Profits?

I recently syndicated a Technology Stocks column to Seeking Alpha. It was titled Salesforce.com’s Platform Strategy Holds Immense Promise. The argument was as follows:

Salesforce has benefited tremendously from its platform strategy. There is still enormous headroom for it to grow in this arena, and I don’t think the opportunity is lost on Marc Benioff. Judging by its recent investment in Apttus, a company that has built on the Force.com platform, and has become quite successful, Salesforce is aware of the vast potential of the platform strategy. Investing aggressively in incubating these start-ups would yield handsomely for the company.

The Seeking Alpha article generated a ton of comments, mostly asking why am I bullish about a company that never generates profits.

Salesforce.com has been wildly successful – look at the 10-year chart and the accompanying revenue growth making it the largest CRM player in the market, up from virtually nothing 10 years ago. It did $3 billion in revenue last year and will do $4 billion this year. When the company achieves scale we should see the 30-40% operating margins we see at ORCL /SAP. Software companies must spend a ton on marketing to generate 25-30% organic growth and can’t generate operating profits while doing so. BUT looking forward to 2015-2016 we should have $6-7 billion in revenue and $2 billion in operating profits. Thus, the $33-34 billion valuation (fully diluted), while expensive, isn’t necessarily crazy. And we’ve got a lot of momentum.
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Chinese Fabless Montage Lists on the Nasdaq

According to researcher iSuppli, the number of Chinese-manufactured set-top boxes sold worldwide is projected to grow 12% annually over 2012 to 2016 to reach 243 million units. The researcher estimates that 58% of Chinese set-top boxes will be exported to the rest of the world. Earlier last month, Shanghai-based semiconductor manufacturer Montage Technology listed on the Nasdaq. Montage is a fabless provider of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor solutions with focus on the cloud computing and home entertainment industries. Here is a quick look of the company and its performance thus far.

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DirectData Networks Continues to Flourish in Storage Array Niche

According to a Mind Commerce report, global spending on big data is projected to grow 48% annually over 2014 through 2019 to $135 billion. Within the market, the researcher estimates that the global big data storage and server market will grow 31.87% annually over 2012 through 2016.

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Rovio’s Angry Birds’ Entertainment Empire

According to a market report by DFC Intelligence, Online Game Market Forecasts, worldwide revenue from online games is projected to grow to $35 billion in 2017 from $19 billion in 2011. The increasing adoption of mobile devices and smartphones is driving the growth within the online gaming industry. But Angry Birds’ maker, Rovio, is moving beyond pure games to all things entertainment.

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UK Document Management Firm Alfresco Preparing for US IPO

According to TechNavio’s report, Global Document Management Systems Market 2012-2016, worldwide global document management market is projected to grow 13.98% over 2012-2016, driven by the increased adoption of such services by small and medium-sized companies. Here is a quick look at UK-based open platform document management solution provider, Alfresco.

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Telogis’ 2014 IPO Plans

Over the past few years, advancement in mobile technology has also led to the increased adoption of location-based services. Mobile applications make use of the device’s ability to transmit and store geographical location of the user to provide access to more value added services. According to a Juniper Research report, mobile location-based services market is projected to grow to $12.7 billion by 2014.

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Is Flipboard’s Monetization Strategy Working?

News aggregating service Flipboard recently announced that it had a user base of more than 56 million readers worldwide. Last August, that number stood at 20 million. Flipboard claims to add at least 200,000 users daily to its application to access more than 3.5 million magazines. Here is a quick discussion of how the site has been expanding its presence.

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Marketo Doing Well Following IPO

According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management (MCCM), digital marketing accounts for nearly 25% of an organization’s marketing spending. The researcher anticipates spending on customer relationship management software to grow 7.5% this year to over $14 billion.

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Twitter IPO: Some Thoughts

The wait is finally over. After months of maintaining silence over its plans and performance, social media icon, Twitter, has finally decided to go public. The company filed for an IPO under the JOBS Act, which lets companies with less than $1 billion in revenues file confidentially. Companies have to make public their documents at least three weeks before the road shows begin. That deadline ended for Twitter late last week when it decided to make its documents public.

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