Will Amazon Buy LivingSocial?

Back in 2011, BIA/Kelsey pegged the daily deals market in the U.S. to grow 35% annually to be worth $3.9 billion in 2015. In an optimistic view, the report estimated the market to be worth $6 billion by 2015, translating to a 47% annual growth rate. But, market prospects don’t seem as bright right now. Last year, daily deals market leader, Groupon listed on the NASDAQ but soon saw its stock price and valuation tumble. The poor performance by Groupon even led to the ouster of founder and CEO, Andrew Mason. Things don’t seem to be going that well either for LivingSocial, the second-largest daily deals provider.

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Pinterest Will Need a $5 Billion-Plus Acquisition

Tumblr’s recent billion-dollar acquisition by Yahoo has fueled further interest in other social media companies that could be the next billion-dollar acquisition target. One such player that has also toyed with the idea of an IPO is social scrapbook site, Pinterest.

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Foursquare: Any Money Behind the Hype?

According to market reports, geoolocation advertising will be a high-growth area through 2015. At present, less than half mobile ad networks use location based advertising. Geolocation-based advertising not only includes display advertising, but it is also evolving into coupon- or deal-based advertising. New York–based Foursquare is a big name in geolocation services. Here is a quick look on how they have fared in the market.

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Apptio Taking Its Time To Go Public

According to Forrester, the technology business management (TBM) market is estimated to be worth $800 million this year. The TBM industry focuses on providing IT departments within an organization with tools that help manage operations more effectively and cost efficiently.

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Square IPO in 2014?

According to a recent Gartner report, worldwide mobile payment transactions are expected to grow 44% over the year to $235.4 billion this year. Gartner estimates the market to be worth $721 billion by 2017, translating to a compounded annual growth rate of 35% over 2012-2017. By 2017, more than 450 million users will conduct mobile payment transactions, compared with 245.2 million this year and 200.8 million last year. Growth will be driven by Asia Pacific countries, which will contribute $74 billion in transactions during the year. By 2016, the region should become the largest by transaction value at $165 billion.

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Jive-ing the Public Market

According to an IDC report released for the previous year, the worldwide enterprise social market segment was led by IBM with revenues of $105.4 million from IBM Connections. IBM accounted for 13.7% of the market’s share. Jive Software (Nasdaq:JIVE) followed IBM at a distant second position with $65.3 million in revenues and 8.5% market share. Microsoft’s Yammer was a distant eighth with $22.3 million in revenues for the year. In a more recent report, IDC estimates the market to have grown 25% over the year to $1 billion in 2012 with IBM Connections maintaining its market leadership position for four years in a row. IDC estimates the market to continue to grow to $4.5 billion by 2016.

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Tableau’s Strong IPO

Researcher Visiongain’s latest report, “World Big Data Market Opportunities 2013-2018: Converging Data Architectures,” estimates global big data market to be worth $12.4 billion this year. The researcher believes that deployment of big data technologies will continue to explode in the coming years as more and more enterprises of all sizes, small and big, begin to deal with it. Today nearly 80% of the enterprises in the developed world are investing some portion of their IT budgets in handling big data. Seattle-based Tableau Software is one player helping these organizations analyze their big data.

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Shazam’s IPO Expected Soon

According to market reports, an average U.S. mobile phone user spends more than 127 minutes a day on mobile apps. Of that time, nearly 43% is spent on gaming apps, followed by 26% of the time being spent on social media apps like Facebook and Twitter. Entertainment apps, which include music and TV viewing, account for 10% of the time spent on mobile apps. Utilities account for the remaining 10% of time spent. Gartner expects the global mobile app industry to be worth $25 billion this year. The market is projected to grow to $46 billion by the year 2016.

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Conduit – Another Billion-Dollar Valuation

According to a Gartner report, worldwide revenues from app downloads is expected to grow 62% this year to $25 billion. The growth in the mobile app market is driven by the increasing use of mobile devices globally. It is estimated that mobile consumers spend nearly two hours on an average each day with mobile apps.

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Home Away’s Expanding Offerings

According to market reports, over the past few years, growth within the vacation rentals industry in the U.S. has outpaced growth of the hotel industry in the country. Studies conducted by the Vacation Rental Managers Association revealed that from August 2011 through August 2012, the vacation rental bookings market grew 30% compared with 3% growth within the hotel industry in the similar period. PhocusWright estimates the U.S. vacation rental industry was worth $85 billion last year, and it expects the market to continue to grow.

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