ADP, Paychex Benefiting From Job Growth

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total nonfarm payroll employment in the country grew by 243,000 jobs last month as the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%. Job growth was widespread across the private sector, specifically in leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. The numbers spell good news for payroll processing firms, which managed to beat market expectations in the recent quarter results and are expected to perform better in the coming quarters.

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Hulu Growing Fast, Needs More Content

According to a study by media agency, OMD, 80% of the online population in the U.S. streams video regularly. The study conducted on 1,600 respondents who streamed videos regularly showed that 24% of those studied had cancelled their cable subscriptions. While the study did not specify reasons for cancellation, analysts believe that cable’s services were replaced by online video streaming services such as those of Hulu and Netflix. Another study by Nielsen also showed that over the past three years, the number of unique visitors to online video services has grown 26% and the time spent by them on online streaming has doubled. Online video streaming provider Hulu has also seen strong growth.

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Amazon And India’s $200 Billion E-Commerce Market

According to a recently released Forrester report, U.S. Online Retail Forecast, 2010 to 2015, online retail sales in the U.S. grew 13% in 2010 to $176.2 billion. Online retail sales are expected to grow at a rate of 10% annually over 2010–2015 to reach $278.9 billion. Within the U.S., e-commerce accounts for 8% of total retail sales. Excluding grocery sales, e-commerce accounts for 11% of total retail sales in the country, and that number is expected to grow to 15% by the year 2015. Online retailer Amazon.com is obviously benefiting from this growth.

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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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