Yahoo’s New Direction

Yahoo’s management overhaul seems to have done good for the company. Recently released quarter results look promising as Yahoo saw performance beat market expectations. This was the first quarter since the third quarter of fiscal 2008 that the company’s revenues reported growth over the previous year.

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Newly Public Proofpoint Offers a View Into Cloud Security

Market researcher Canalys estimates that the worldwide enterprise security market will grow 8.7% this year to $22.9 billion worldwide. The anti-virus segment will retain the highest market share of the enterprise software market, contributing 11.3% of the total market value and reporting 6.8% growth over the year. Cloud security, in particular, is seeing significant adoption, and Proofpoint’s IPO indicates the beginning of several public offerings. Also in the pipeline is Qualys. Of course, the IPO pipeline for SaaS and cloud companies is significant right now. Many companies in the $75 million-$150 million range are waiting in the wings.

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Newly Public Splunk Capitalizes on Big Data and Cloud Security Trends

IDC estimates that the market for Big Data technology and services will grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9 billion in 2015, translating to a 40% annual growth rate. The volume of digital information created and replicated from 2011 through 2015 is projected to grow 45% annually from 1.8 trillion gigabytes to 7.9 trillion gigabytes. Recently listed Splunk focuses on managing this data. Looking at the market’s reaction to their stock listing, it may be a company to reckon with.

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Microsoft’s New Products Move Away from the Desktop

According to Gartner’s recent estimates, worldwide PC shipments during the first quarter this year grew 1.9% over the year to 89 million units. The results are a pleasant surprise, considering the 1.2% decline that was projected by Gartner. Shipment increases were driven by growth of 6.7% growth in the EMEA and 2% in the Asia/Pacific markets, where shipments grew to 28.2 million and 30.3 million units, respectively. Japan is also seeing strong recovery following the earthquake last year, and shipments grew 11.5% to 4.4 million units. However, the Americas were weak markets, with PC shipments falling 3.5% over the year to 15.5 million units in the U.S. and Latin America showing a 3.2% decline to 9 million units.

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eBay Eyes China’s E-Buyers

According to Gartner research, the number of consumers who use mobile devices for payments is estimated to have grown 38% in 2011 to more than 141 million users. The volume of transactions over mobile devices is estimated at $86.1 billion, compared with $48.9 billion reported in 2010. Gartner believes that retail shoppers will drive the adoption of mobile payment services. Online marketplace eBay is focusing on this segment to help ensure growth in the coming quarters.

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IBM Reinforces Focus on Analytics

Earlier this month, Gartner issued their revised estimates for Q1 worldwide IT spending, and the numbers seem to be improving. The researcher now expects overall global IT spending growth in Q1 of 2012 to have been a mere 2.5% over the year compared with earlier estimates of 3.7%. But the lower figure was on account of the U.S. dollar strengthening over other currencies. Excluding telecom services, Gartner now projects annual average growth of IT spending to be 5.3% in current dollar terms and 5.9% in constant dollar terms from 2011 through 2016. For the current quarter, on a constant currency basis, Gartner now expects worldwide IT spending to grow 5.2% compared with 4.6% projected earlier. Growth during the current quarter is expected to be driven by telecom equipment, which is projected to grow at 10.3% over the year. Computing hardware, which includes PCs, mobile devices, and tablets, will account for 7% growth during the year, and software is projected to grow 7.3% over the year.

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Google vs. Facebook: Ad Wars

According to researcher eMarketer, online ad spending in the U.S. will grow 23.3% this year to $39.5 billion. Double-digit growth is projected to continue till 2014, when online ad spending in the country is projected to reach $52.8 billion. The researcher estimates that by 2016, online ad spend will account for $62 billion. The ad spending boom is already stirring up an ad war among online giants.

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Twitter: Phenomenon, Yes. But A Sustainable Business?

Facebook’s IPO may be round the corner, but that is definitely not pushing Twitter into IPO mode. For now, Twitter seems to prefer to watch the market’s reaction to Facebook’s going public and focus on expanding their capabilities. Twitter has made several acquisitions as it builds up momentum for their own IPO expected next year.

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Workday Challenges Oracle and SAP in Talent Management

Software-as-a-service based enterprise business services provider Workday is expected to hit the market with an IPO this year. A few analysts believe that Workday’s IPO may be more worth their while than that of other Internet giants like Facebook. I certainly believe this is an organization to watch. Workday operates in the cloud computing and SaaS markets, which are both high-growth areas. According to Forrester Research, cloud computing is projected to grow to $240 billion by 2020 from $40.7 billion in 2010. Gartner estimates the worldwide SaaS market will grow 17.9% this year to $14.5 billion and to $22.1 billion by 2015.

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INRIX Riding High on Apps Using Traffic Data

According to a market research report released last year, World GPS Market Forecast to 2013, from 2011-2013 the shipment of global positioning system (GPS) devices is projected to grow at more than 20% to 900 million units. Growth is fueled by technology convergence that is enabling GPS services in smartphones and other consumer electronics such as cameras. The report estimates that the number of subscribers to GPS-enabled location-based services (LBS) will translate to a market opportunity of $10 billion by 2013. Within GPS devices, there is also strong growth among the number of navigation systems that receive traffic data. Strategy Analytics believes that the number of traffic-data-receiving navigation devices will grow from 8.5 million units in 2010 to 37.6 million in 2018.

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