Zynga’s Online Gamble

A report by Lazard Capital released last year expects the social gaming market to be worth $9 billion by 2015. The social gaming market has seen growth through the increased adoption of social networking sites, such as Facebook. The report suggests that nearly 41% of the U.S. Internet-using population accesses social games through these networking sites.

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Success on iOS but Weak Console Game Performance for Electronic Arts

According to investment firm Digi Capital, in their Global Games Investment Review 2013, the digital games industry is projected to grow at an annual rate of 12.2% over 2012 through 2016 to reach $83 billion. Online and mobile games will continue to drive growth in the market as sales of console games dwindle. In 2012, online and mobile games amounted to 49% of total global video games revenues. Their share is projected to grow to 57%, translating to $48 billion, by the year 2016.

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Baidu, Alibaba Grow on China’s Increasing Internet Usage

China continues to make strong progress in deepening their internet penetration rates. As of last year, 42% of the country’s population had access to the internet, compared with a mere 4.6% in 2002. According to the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) China will continue to improve the user experience of the service by increasing the number of households with broadband access. By the end of the current year, more than 70% of China’s Internet users will have access to broadband service, adding nearly 35 million households this year. Last year, the number of households with broadband grew 49% to 94 million. Increasing access to faster Internet speeds ensures strong growth for the Internet players in the country.

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Online Travel Counts on International and Mobile Growth

According to PhoCusWright, a travel research firm, global online travel bookings grew 8% over the year last year to $313 billion. The researcher estimates that online travel market sales will grow 7% a year this year. Meanwhile, the online travel sector is focusing on international and mobile expansion to ensure it captures a bigger share of the slowly recovering travel market.

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Athena Health Acquires Epocrates

A 2011 report by IDC estimates that the electronic health reform (EHR) market will grow from $1.9 billion in 2009 to $3.8 billion by 2015. Outpatient EHR is projected to account for $1.41 billion of the market, and the inpatient EHR services will contribute the remaining $2.4 billion by 2015. A more recent report by IDC continues to project growth, as it suggests EHR penetration to grow from 25% in 2009 to 80% by 2016. Hopefully, this will positively impact healthcare administration costs at large.

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Pure Storage Grows on Flash Memory

According to the 2013 McClean Report, the total flash memory market (NAND and NOR) is estimated to have grown 2% last year to $30.4 billion.  While growth in the flash memory market has been driven by the increased consumer adoption of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices, the enterprise segment is also shifting toward this segment. Flash memory is helping improve faster communication channels and system response times in organizations. A Gartner study estimates that the enterprise Flash memory market will be worth $4 billion by 2015.

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Cloudera’s Big Data Growth Story

In a report published by IDC earlier this year, Worldwide Big Data Technology and Services 2012-2016 Forecast, the worldwide big data technology and services market is projected to grow annually at 31% to be worth $23.8 billion by 2016. This is a conservative estimate compared with Wikibon’s research, which projects the big data market to be worth $50 billion by the year 2017, up from $11.4 billion last year.

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MobileIron Protects Ever-Growing Mobile Data Pool

Analysts at Gartner believe that the mobile device management (MDM) market will see strong growth in the coming years. Studies estimate that nearly 20% of medium and large businesses in the country have already purchased MDM tools. The MDM market is still small and was estimated to be worth more than $500 million in revenues in 2012. This is up from an estimated value of $265 million in 2009. But as more and more organizations adopt the “bring your own device” (BYOD) approach within the workplace, the MDM market will grow.

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Adobe’s Creative Cloud Takes Stock to 52-Week High

According to Gartner, the global public cloud services market was estimated to have grown 20% last year to $109 billion. Business process services (BPS) was the largest segment in the market at $84.2 billion, with a 77% market share, compared with $72 billion a year ago. The software as a service (SaaS) market is estimated to be worth $14.4 billion, and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) reported the highest growth, from $4.3 billion in 2011 to $6.2 billion in 2012. Besides businesses, the industry is seeing increased adoption of cloud services by individuals. Digital services provider Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) is counting on this increased adoption to drive their own growth.

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ExactTarget’s Growth Continues

According to a recent report, the marketing automation industry is the fastest growing segment within the $4 billion CRM market. Researcher SiriusDecisions believes that adoption of marketing automation will grow 50% by the year 2015. Another report by TechNavio pegs the growth of the worldwide marketing automation market at 8.2% annually from 2011 through 2015. Growth within online marketing is projected to be driven by the increasing availability and adoption of SaaS-based marketing tools and the increased adoption of these tools by small and medium businesses. >>>