According to Gartner in 2011, life science and technology companies worldwide spent an estimated $17.3 billion on software, consulting services, and internal IT personnel dedicated to sales support, marketing, and finance. For these companies, revenue management solutions are becoming a big part of IT spending. In a report published in 2009, IDC estimated that the absence of revenue life cycle management solutions for these companies caused a loss of more than $11 billion in annual revenues.
Things seem to be turning around for local business reviews site, Angie’s List (Nasdaq:ANGI). Recently, the company released their quarterly financials which managed to surpass market expectations. They attribute the success to an improving consumer economy. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, in April of this year, disposable income in the country fell 0.1%, but when adjusted for inflation the metric showed an improvement of 0.1% over the year. Similarly, during April, consumer spending fell -0.2%, but when adjusted for inflation grew 0.1%.
According to comScore’s 2013 Latin America Digital Future in Focus report released last month, Latin America recorded the fastest-growing online population of any region during the previous year. The number of unique Internet visitors in the region grew 12% over the year to more than 147 million as of March of this year. The increased use of the Internet is driving online retail sales. Over the year, the number of online consumers in the region grew 16%. In fact, retailer Walmart’s website reported 11.7 million unique visitors in March, an increase of 163% over the year. It is this increasing online traffic that is attracting other e-tail giants into the region.
According to eMarketer, the number of U.S. digital TV viewers is projected to grow from 106.2 million last year to 145.3 million by 2017. The researcher estimates digital TV viewers will account for more than a half of the total Internet user population in the country by 2014. The growth of digital video streaming will also spur growth in advertising in the segment. eMarketer predicts that out of the total spending of $42.52 billion on digital ads this year, marketers will spend $3.8 billion on online video ads.
A recently released Gartner report titled Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 4Q12 Update pegs worldwide spending on public cloud services to increase 18% annually over 2011 through 2016 to $210 billion. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will drive growth in the market by recording 41% annualized growth through 2016. Global SaaS spending is projected to grow 20% annually to $32.8 billion by 2016. The growing importance of cloud-based offerings is ensuring that the major technology players concentrate their efforts on bagging a bigger share of this market.
Newzoo’s 2013 Global Games Market Report estimates that the worldwide online and electronic gaming market will grow 6% over the year to be worth $70.4 billion this year. The report estimates that by the end of this year, there will be more than 1.2 billion gamers worldwide. Growth in the market will be driven by emerging markets in Latin America and Asia Pacific, which are expected to be worth $3 billion and $25.1 billion, respectively, this year. Console games will remain the leading gaming platform with 43% of the market, translating to $30.6 billion. Smartphone- and tablet-based games are projected to grow 35% to $12.3 billion.
According to Gartner’s Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 4Q12 Update worldwide spending on public cloud services is estimated to have grown 19% last year to $110.3 billion. The market is projected to grow 18% annually over the period 2011 through 2016 to be worth $76.9 billion by the year 2016. Within the market, SaaS segment is expected to grow 20% annually from $13.5 billion in 2011 to $32.8 billion in 2016.
According to IDC’s Q1 PC shipment report, worldwide PC shipments fell 14% to 76.3 million units. The decline was attributed to the increased adoption of mobile devices and the muted response to Windows 8. The declining market is intensifying competition among existing vendors. Most industry players have been diversifying operations into higher margin products and emerging trend technologies. Under Meg Whitman’s guidance, HP (NASDAQ:HPQ) seems to have found a successful alternate strategy as well. They remained the market leader in the industry despite a 24% drop in shipment volumes. HP now commands 15.7% of the global PC market.
Gartner recently published their report on the CRM industry, Market Share Analysis: Customer Relationship Management Software, Worldwide, 2012. The report reveals that the worldwide CRM market grew 12.5% last year to $18 billion. The biggest consumers of CRM technology reside in North America and Western Europe which commanded nearly 80% of the global market. But, emerging markets are picking up. China and Latin American markets reported some of the highest growth in the sector with 26% and 24% respectively. According to the report, Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) was the leading CRM services provider globally with over 14% market share, accounting for over $2.5 billion in annual sales.
The continuing dismal performance of the worldwide PC industry and Dell’s (NASDAQ:Dell) inability to make a mark within the fast growing mobile device market has not helped their performance. The weak results are also not helping investors who were looking to counter Dell’s proposal of going private through a $24.4 billion Leveraged Buy-Out (LBO) by founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners.