Disney Plans For Aggressive Growth In Parks And Education

According to market estimates, sales of new DVDs fell 20% over the year in 2009. Total spending on home entertainment, which includes DVD and Blu-ray rentals and sales, together with electronic downloading, fell 10% to $4.7 billion for the year. Researchers estimate that the consumers are shifting from the purchase of DVDs to an online streaming model such as that offered by Netflix. Declining DVD sales are impacting other traditional entertainment companies’ market performance. Recently announced results by Disney reflected this weak market.

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Adobe Beats Estimates

Last month, Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) reported strong second quarter results that beat estimates. The clash between Adobe and Apple over Flash ended with Adobe making a conciliatory move and releasing a Flash-to-HTML5 converter. Last week, Google also released a Flash-to HTML5 converter called Swiffy. Let’s take a closer look.

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Accenture Plans To Hire 66,000 More People In 2011

During the previous quarter, Accenture’s strong market practices helped them to establish a solid presence in the global market. Not only are they winning big contracts worldwide, but they are also being given numerous accolades. Last week, Standards & Poor’s announced plans to add Accenture to the S&P 500 Index starting July. Last month, the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals named the company the leader among the Global Outsourcing 100 List for the fourth consecutive year. It is thus no surprise that their quarterly performance also surpassed the market expectations.

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Gilt Groupe Sees Gold In Diversification And Overseas Expansion

Flash sales sites shot to attention after a spate of acquisitions announced over the past few months. Earlier this year, Nordstrom bought HauteLook for $270 million. Last year end, e-tailing giant Amazon also ventured into the market when it bought the members-only site BuyVIP for $96.5 million. The global market in luxury flash sales is led by the French company Vente Privée, which is projected to record sales of over $1.5 billion this year. Within the U.S. though, the market is led by New York–based Gilt Groupe, which has managed to stay independent thus far.

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Oracle To Avoid Large Acquisitions

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) last week reported strong results driven by its software business. Hardware sales were below expectations and raised investor concerns about the integration of the Sun acquisition. However, Oracle said that these results reflected its decision to go after profit rather than revenue. CEO Larry Ellison also said that Oracle would be focusing more on organic growth. Let’s take a closer look.

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Tumblr Struggles With Monetization

Founded by David Karp in New York City in 2007, tumblr is a micro-blogging platform that has re-envisioned the interface of traditional blogging by aggregating posts from different blogs and giving them a fun visual navigation through quick, mixed-media posts. Tumblr has simplified the effort required in sites like WordPress for blog creation and also added features that are not possible in much simpler micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter. Below is a brief overview on this blogging site, which now hosts more blogs than the veteran player, WordPress.

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Zynga’s Thought Leadership In Immersive Advertising

Besides Yelp, Zynga is another online player that appears to be waiting to cash in on the IPO market. Analysts expect Zynga to file for an IPO by the end of this month. Meanwhile, the company is busy launching new games and creating attractive marketing tie-ups in the entertainment industry.

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New Products At Google And Facebook Put The Ball In Yelp’s Court

Till now, the online local listings player, Yelp.com, has successfully managed to avoid Google’s buy-out overtures and other competition while remaining a private player. This may change. After declaring their intentions last year to stay private, Yelp has finally started evaluating the option of going public. According to management, an IPO now will give the company the best valuation. They still have not finalized their intentions and have not yet filed the requisite documents with the SEC. But Yelp has begun to prepare for the IPO by scouting the market for a CFO with public company experience.

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Revenue Sharing A Good Strategy For Zillow

The real estate market in the U.S. does not seem to be on the verge of any recovery. In a survey conducted by Trulia and RealtyTrac.com of 2,018 homeowners across the country in April of this year, 54% of the surveyed population believes that the housing market recovery will take another two and a half years. The sentiment is reflected in declining home prices, which fell 3% sequentially last quarter, the largest quarterly drop since Q4 2008.  The National Association of Realtors also reported that existing home sales fell 0.8% over the previous month to 5.09 million in April, and the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that new home starts fell 10.6% from March to April. But that has not stopped online real estate portal Zillow.com from filing for an IPO listing scheduled to raise $51.75 million later this year.

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Lack Of New Model Drags On iPhone Sales At Verizon

There were high expectations from the Verizon iPhone, awaited with great eagerness. Though it did lead to strong first quarter results for Verizon, the phone’s release on Verizon hasn’t affected AT&T as much as it was expected to. AT&T sold 3.6 million iPhones, up by a million, with iPhone churn unchanged, while Verizon sold 2.2 million iPhones. Let’s take a closer look. >>>