Facebook’s Talent Acquisitions

eMarketer’s latest report predicts the U.S. mobile advertising market to grow 77% this year to $7.29 billion.  Two years ago, the mobile advertising market stood at $1.48 billion. Growth is projected to continue in the years to come, with the market estimated to be worth $27.13 billion by 2017. The segment will account for 45% of digital ad spending and 14% of total ad spending in 2017. Google should continue to dominate the market, with mobile advertising revenues growing from $3.98 billion this year to $9.29 billion by 2017. Facebook is predicted to remain the second largest ad network, with mobile revenues growing from $390.9 million in the past year to $1.86 billion by 2017. That is strong growth given that Facebook earned almost no mobile ad revenues in 2011.

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Xoom’s Zooming Growth in Money Transfer

Market reports suggest that last year more than $100 billion of funds are transferred online from the U.S. alone. The market is expected to be worth four to five times that globally. According to the World Bank, the global market for remittances grew annually at 12% to $513 billion over 2004 to 2011. The Bank estimates the market to grow annually 7% through the year 2015.

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Zynga’s Focus Shifts From Social to Mobile

According to market reports, online gaming through social networks may have been a fad and is on a decline. Recent results reported by social gaming player, Zynga (Nasdaq:ZNGA) support this realization. In view of the declining loyalty to social games, other games publishers are also shutting down games. Players like Electronic Arts are shutting down three social games: The Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society. But while the importance of social networks to gaming may be reducing, the impact of mobile devices on the gaming industry is improving. Researchers estimate mobile gaming to be worth $9 billion this year and Zynga is trying hard to make inroads into that market as it struggles to survive.

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Nokia’s Struggles Continue

IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, released last week, saw the worldwide mobile phone markets grow 4% over the year to 418.6 million units during the first quarter this year. This was the first ever quarter when smartphone shipments surpassed shipments of feature phones. Total smartphone shipments during the quarter came in at 216.2 million units, reporting growth of 42% over the year. Another trend noticed was the inclusion of Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE on the list of leading smartphone vendors as they made significant progress with the less expensive Android-based smartphones. Overall, Samsung’s dominance grew to 28% of the worldwide mobile phone market, with shipment of 115 million units during the quarter. Nokia came in a distant second, followed by Apple.

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Twitter’s Maturing Monetization

After months of “will it or won’t it?”, it seems that the seven-year-old Twitter may be getting ready for a much-awaited IPO. Followed by the earlier management restructuring, Twitter’s strong growth is also fueling such speculation.

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Amazon’s Growing Digital Empire

According to a Forrester report, e-commerce sales in the U.S. are projected to grow 13% this year to $262 billion. e-commerce sales are estimated to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 9% over the period 2012 through 2017 to be worth $370 billion by 2017. E-commerce may be growing, but Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is counting on other avenues to help continue their own growth story.

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Apple Needs to Do Something Big

According to IDC, the smartphone market is projected to grow from 918.6 million units estimated this year to 1.52 billion units by the year 2017. The researcher projects growth to be driven by emerging markets of Brazil and India and continuing strength of the Chinese market. iPhones were the best selling smartphone in the U.S. market, with a 39% share for the three-month period ending February compared with 35% a year ago. As Apple increases their retail presence worldwide, they saw an improvement in the Japanese market, where the iPhone became the lead selling smartphone for 2012. But their strategy for emerging markets remains unclear.

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Netflix Becomes HBO; Target for Apple?

The latest quarter continued to see Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) on the rebound as the stock recovered from its large drop more than a year ago when the company was forced by market sentiment to retract plans to increase subscription charges. The stock had also seen significant devaluation when the company failed to add subscribers at a fast enough pace and invested heavily in both domestic and international expansion. Though the stock may not have reached its earlier glory days, for now, it has recovered and analysts expect it to continue to do so.

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Microsoft After Windows 8

IDC’s PC shipment report continues to suggest an imploding PC market. Globally, PC shipments fell 14% over the year to 76.3 million units, a much bigger reduction than the 8% decline that the researcher had estimated earlier. IDC attributed the higher-than-anticipated fall to the weak market response for Windows 8 and the growth of tablets and smartphones. The U.S. market reported a 13% reduction to 14.2 million units, reporting its lowest level since 2006.

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eBay Aims to Expand PayPal Significantly

According to a Forrester report, online retail sales in the U.S. are projected to grow annually at 10% from $231 billion this year to $370 billion by 2017. Despite the continuing slowdown in European economies, the researcher expects the market to pick up as well as online retail sales grow from $165.6 billion during the current year to $247.1 billion by 2017, translating to an annual growth rate of 10.5%. Forrester believes that the growth of online retail is attributed to the increasing adoption of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

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