SAP Needs To Acquire SaaS Portfolio

SAP, one of the largest companies in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market, recently reported strong results – its eighth straight quarter of double-digit growth – while its rival Oracle recently reported disappointing results. In December SAP announced plans to acquire SaaS talent management vendor SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion. After Oracle’s $1.5 billion acquisition of SaaS vendor RightNow, SAP seems to be getting serious about its cloud strategy. Let’s take a closer look.

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Facebook’s Monetization Potential

Finally, the most-awaited tech IPO is round the corner. Social media giant Facebook  filed their S-1 this week, thus ending the long wait. Facebook plans to raise $10 billion through this IPO. According to Dealogic, an IPO of this scale will make the IPO the biggest ever in tech, surpassing Google’s $1.9 billion IPO debut in 2004.

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ExactTarget Rides Email Marketing Wave

According to a Forrester report, U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016, total advertising spend in the U.S. is expected to grow to $77 billion. In 2011, spending on interactive channels, which includes display advertising, search, email, mobile, and social media advertising, accounted for 16% of advertising spending. These channels’ contribution is expected to grow to 26% by 2016. Online marketing services provider ExactTarget is working to capitalize on this growth as it gets ready for an IPO.

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Netflix’s Quarter From Hell

According to the latest comScore report on online video viewing for December 2011, 182 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content. On average, 23.2 hours of content were watched per viewer. A total of 43.5 billion videos were viewed online by U.S. Internet users. The figures translate to an impressive 85% of the U.S. Internet audience viewing online video content. Google sites were ranked as the leading online video content destination with more than 157 million unique visitors in December accessing 21.8 billion videos. Despite its immense popularity, Netflix did not even figure in the top 10 destinations in that month.

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Samsung Loses The Top Spot

Last quarter Samsung became the leading vendor of smartphones, but its reign at the top was short-lived. Apple shot back to the top with record sales of 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, and Samsung is close behind with an estimated 36.5 million smartphones sold.

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Golden Apple

After a brief fumble last quarter, Apple is back with a bang. The new version of the iPhone has been met with strong acceptance, and Apple beat Android phones in the U.S. to become the leading smartphone device in the market. According to Kantar Worldpanel research, iPhone sales grew 128% in the last quarter of 2011 to 37 million units. Within the U.S., iPhones have a 44.9% market share, marginally ahead of Android’s 44.8% market share. Android continues to dominate in the European markets, but Apple is catching up. In the U.K., during the December quarter last year, Apple’s share grew 34% compared with 22% a year ago.

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Yahoo In Disarray, Business Declining

Yahoo’s management changes continue. The company recently replaced former CEO Carol Bartz with ex-PayPal executive Scott Thompson, and a few weeks later, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the board. But it is not just senior leadership that is leaving; Yahoo is also losing out on market share as they fail to match up to the might of Google and Facebook. According to eMarketer, Yahoo’s share of the online ad market fell to 11% percent last year, compared with 13.3% a year ago. During the same period, Google’s share grew to 40.8% from 38.5%, and Facebook’s share increased to 6.4% from 4.6%.

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IBM Focuses on Analytics

Earlier this year, Gartner released their report on worldwide IT spending, and the numbers don’t look so good. The analyst downgraded growth expectations in 2012 from 4.6% to 3.7%, attributing the decline to continuing global recession, the euro crisis, and the impact of Thailand’s floods on hard-disk drive production. Spending on IT products and services in 2012 is now expected to grow to $3.8 trillion with spending on Telecom Services growing 2.3% over the year and amounting to $1.74 trillion. Spending on Telecom Equipment and Enterprise Software will see the highest growth of 6.9% and 6.4%, respectively, to end the year with revenues of $475 billion and $285 billion. Computing hardware spending is projected to grow 5.1% over the year to $424 billion, while IT services will see comparatively slower growth of 3.1% to $874 billion.

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Why Is Microsoft At 52-Week High?

Microsoft estimates that last quarter, consumer PC sales fell 6% over the year. Surprisingly, the decline was led by the falling sales of netbooks, which are being replaced by iPads and the recently released Kindle Fire. Excluding sales of netbooks, PC sales would have reported growth of 2% last quarter. A year ago, netbooks accounted for nearly 8% of the PC market. However, recent reports suggest that they account for only 2%. In addition, macroeconomic factors of supply chain shortages because of floods in Thailand and the continuing recession that hurt market growth. Gartner too estimates that global PC sales fell 1.4% over the year last quarter and were particularly hurt by the shortage of hard disk drives because of the flooding in Thailand.

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Online Advertising Will Overtake Print in 2012

According to eMarketer’s latest report, this year, U.S. online advertising will exceed print-based advertising spending for the first time. Online advertising spending is projected to grow 20% this year to $40 billion, while print advertising is expected to decline 6% over the year to $33.8 billion. Last year, online advertising revenues also grew more than 20%. Online advertising spending is expected to grow to $62 billion by 2016, while print advertising will continue to decline during the same period to $32.3 billion. Below is an infographic charting the growth of online advertising, courtesy of CNBC.

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