Swedish-born Qlik Offers Business Intelligence to SMBs

Researcher TBR’s 2Q13 Business Intelligence Software Vendor Benchmark estimates worldwide business intelligence (BI) software market to grow 4% annually over the period 2013 through 2018 to be worth more than $40 billion by 2018. In another report, Gartner estimated the BI market to have reported a growth of 6.8% over the year to $13.13 billion last year. SAP was the leading player in the segment last year with a market share of 22% followed by Oracle’s 15% market share. IBM and SAS were neck to neck with 12.4% and 12.2% market share respectively and Microsoft was the fifth largest player with 9% market share. While these big giants surely have a bigger footprint in the market, there are other smaller players as well who are making their presence felt.

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Zynga’s Woes Continue

Since social gaming player, Zynga (Nasdaq:ZNGA), went public, their troubles have only increased. Not only have their acquisitions failed to deliver, but their existing games are losing steam as well. Add to that concern of increased competition and slowing growth rates for the industry. Little wonder then that Zynga has had to rethink not only their business plans, but also their organization structure.

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Workday Entering Student Services

According to Gartner, the Software-as-a-Service market is projected to grow 20% over the period 2011 through 2016 to $32.8 billion. Within the market, CRM will be the largest market growing from $5 billion in 2012 to $9 billion by the year 2016. But the biggest growth within SaaS will be driven by Office Suites which are projected to grow 49% annually over the period 2011 through 2016 and HR offerings will register the slowest growth at 6.7%. But that is not slowing down Workday (Nasdaq: WDAY), which continues to deliver strong quarterly results.

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SAP Driving Growth through HANA

According to researchers, Siemer & Associates, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market is projected to grow 16.8% this year to $16.7 billion. The researcher believes that the growth in the market is driven by increased adoption of CRM, ERP, HR SaaS tools and the need for mobile apps for corporate applications. Another report estimates the SaaS market to be worth $22 billion by the year 2015.

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Samsung Giving Apple a Run for Its Money

Earlier last week, Apple released its updated iPhones – the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. Many believe that Apple has lost its innovative streak with the passing of founder Steve Jobs. Many of the company’s new products may be testimony to this belief as they feature rather simple upgrades instead of the radical new developments that consumers expect Apple to deliver. Add to that the fact that some of their key features like the Map application and Siri have failed to deliver.

In addition, while Apple’s iPhone may be the biggest selling smartphone in the U.S., it is still a distant second in the worldwide market. According to a recently released report by Gartner, during the second quarter of 2013, smartphone sales grew from 153.77 million units to 225.36 million units. South Korean electronics giant, Samsung, was the clear leader, with 71.38 million units, accounting for 31.7% of the global market. Apple came in second with 31.9 million units, or a 14.2% market share. Compare that with the previous quarter, when Samsung had 29.7% and Apple 18.8% of the market. Slowly but surely, Samsung is widening its lead, and Apple’s new phones will have a tough time catching up. The main advantage that Samsung is capitalizing on, today, is its much better channel coverage in the low end of the smartphone market, especially in the emerging geographies.

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Adobe’s Cloud Subscription Is a Success

Earlier this year, digital publishing solutions provider, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced plans to shift its revenue model to a subscriptions-based one. It planned to gradually shut down support and sales of perpetual license products and instead get users to subscribe to them by charging an annual or monthly fee. The basic subscription costs $19.99 a month, and the entire Adobe Creative Cloud bundle is available at $49.99 a month. But not all customers were pleased with the move as it meant that they would have to shell out more per month instead of the one-time license fee paid earlier. But in the recently ended quarter results, it appears that Adobe has managed to suppress all doubts as its performance exceeded market expectations.

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LivingSocial Continues Its Descent

LivingSocial’s troubles in the waning daily deals space are not easing. Analysts were once very positive about the market space and were projecting 47% annual growth rates, with market value that was projected to grow to $6 billion by 2015. But since then, projections have become more conservative. Market leader Groupon has seen its valuations tumble since it went public and disappointing performance led to the company firing founder Andrew Mason from the position of CEO.

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Splunk’s Stock Continues to Soar

Big Data Market – Global Scenario, Trends, Industry Analysis, Size, Share and Forecast, 2012-2018, a report by Transparency Market Research, projects the worldwide big data market to grow 41% annually from $6.3 billion in 2012 to $48.3 billion in 2018. The researcher estimates software and services segment to be worth 50% of the market in 2012. While software will remain a strong growth industry, big data growth will be dominated by the storage segment, which is projected to grow 45% annually over this period.

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Nimble Storage – An IPO or an Acquisition Target?

According to market reports, the network storage market is estimated to be worth $20 billion this year. Software solutions within this market are projected to grow 15% annually and account for nearly $5 billion of this market. Another report, IHS iSuppli Data Flash Market Tracker, estimates the NAND Flash memory market  to grow 8% in 2012 to $22.9 billion. The researcher estimates that the market will grow to $30.9 billion by 2016.

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SugarCRM’s Path to IPO

According to a Gartner report titled Forecast: Enterprise Software Markets, Worldwide, 2012-2017, 2Q13 Update, the worldwide customer relationship management (CRM) market is projected to grow 15% annually to $36.5 billion by 2017. While Salesforce.com remains a dominant force in the market, there are others that are showing strong growth potential as well.

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