International Expansion At Travel Sites

A survey conducted by AAA predicted that despite increasing gas prices, almost 35 million people traveled 50 miles or more over the Memorial Day long weekend. Even the Air Transport Association of America (ATA) estimates that an average of 2.24 million people will fly every day from June through August, which is an increase of 34,000 people over the year. The ATA also expects the current year to be a record-breaking summer for Americans going on international trips.

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LinkedIn IPO Is A Success, But Monetization Rate Is Far Too Low

The market is waiting for some big Internet IPOs to come out this year and next, with Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and the like expected to lead the brigade. However as it went to trade on the NYSE earlier this month, LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD), the leading social network for professionals, became the first big U.S. social networking company to list. Its IPO is also being called the biggest Internet IPO since Google listed in 2004. >>>

Concur Continues To Expand

Concur (NASDAQ:CNQR), a leading SaaS expense management vendor, is in the expansion mode. It recently acquired mobile trip manager TripIt for $120 million and followed this up with a strategic investment of $40 million in Indian travel portal Cleartrip. It has also announced the launch of Concur Japan and Concur India. Further, it joined the NetSuite (NYSE:N) SuiteCloud developer network. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Active Network: Long History Of Losses

A survey commissioned by the recently listed Active Network (NYSE: ACTV) revealed that 73% of U.S. households paid to participate in a recreational or community activity last year. That translates to $110 billion in registration spending incurred by 1.8 billion residents in the country. >>>

Intuit Needs An Emerging Market Strategy

Earlier this year, Credit Suisse reported that the total digital units for H&R Block for year-to-date figures for the tax season 2011 grew 7% over the year, while Intuit reported a much smaller 1% gain in total digital units. More recent data showed that H&R Block’s online units grew 27% compared with 6% for Intuit. Statistics show that Intuit lost market share to H&R Block, but the company still managed to surpass analyst expectations for the quarter.

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EMC, VMWare Rocking

Driven by the strong demand of virtualization, both VMWare and EMC continued to deliver strong results. In addition to organic growth, the two have used this year to acquire other players to be able to deliver a broader set of solutions for their customers.

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HP, Dell Chase Tablet Market

Global PC shipments fell 3.2% during the Q1 this year, according to IDC. The drop was driven by wary business and retail consumers, rising fuel and commodity prices, the tsunami in Japan and political turmoil in the Middle East. The researchers expect the U.S. market growth to continue to be strained in the current quarter. Last quarter, shipments in the country fell 10.7% over last year to 16.1 million units. Both EMEA and Japan saw contraction in shipments, and it was only Asia Pacific markets, excluding Japan, where shipments grew, albeit a mere 5.6%. PC makers HP and Dell seem to be up for tougher times in the coming quarters.

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Low Margins Haunt Salesforce But Investment Paves Way For Later SaaS Companies

Leading SaaS customer relationship management (CRM) vendor, Salesforce.com recently reported its first quarter results that topped analyst estimates even as profits slumped 97%. Salesforce.com continues to report record revenues, but margins have been a concern. Let’s take a closer look.
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Genpact, Wipro, HCL Seeking Stronger Presence In Niche Verticals

Everest Group’s Market Vista report for Q1 2011 estimates the first quarter global transaction volumes for outsourcing contracts at an annual contract value of $3 billion. The number of contracts signed during the year by the business process outsourcing (BPO) segment grew 25% sequentially driven by significant growth across all sectors including the BFSI, manufacturing, distribution and retail and healthcare verticals. However, IT outsourcing (ITO) transactions fell 17% over the previous quarter. Overall outsourcing transactions fell 5% over the quarter but grew 14% over the year.

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Spotify Expected To Launch Movies, U.S. Service

According to ABI research, mobile music streaming will see significant growth in the coming years with the subscriber base expected to cross 161 million by 2016, compared to 5.9 million projected by the end of the current year. That translates to a compounded annual growth rate of 95%. By 2012, Asia Pacific should become the biggest market for mobile music streaming. The report also claims that service providers such as Spotify will be one of the big gainers in this music trend. Below is a graph from the report that shows the geographic spread of this growth.

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