SAP Banks On In-Memory Computing

The strong results from technology bellwethers Oracle and IBM set the tone for high expectations. Despite double-digit revenue growth and profit growth, SAP (NYSE:SAP) missed analyst estimates. However, it says it is undeterred from achieving its goal of $20 billion annual revenue by 2015. Let’s take a closer look.

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Indexing Sites: A Retrospective

Search engines such as those owned by Google do a good job at finding the right mathematical fit for a user’s query. But traditional search engines don’t necessarily give results that are best suited to the user’s interests. Social bookmarking and indexing sites such as StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg, to name a few, index the Internet’s ever-increasing amount of information for content specific to a user’s choice and help users store, share and access links that may not have turned up on the traditional search. Here is a snapshot of the big players in this space.

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Microsoft Fighting Back On All Fronts

An IDC report released earlier last month saw global PC shipments fall 3.2% over the year in the first quarter of this year. IDC had projected 1.5% growth in shipments for the quarter and attributes the decline to rising fuel and commodity prices and the tsunami in Japan. In the U.S., shipments fell 10% over the previous year. Japan saw a 15.9% decline during the quarter. There was some growth in the Asia Pacific market, excluding Japan, where shipments increased 5.6% over the year.

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Amazon Firing On All Cylinders; Crash A Blip

According to an eMarketer report, e-commerce sales in the U.S. will continue to grow over the next four years to $269.8 billion in 2015 from $165.4 billion recorded last year. The Commerce Department estimates that e-commerce sales in 2010 in the country increased 14.8% over the previous year’s $144.1 billion. eMarketer projects sales to grow 13.7% this year with growth dropping to 11.3% in 2012, 9.7% in 2013 and 8.7% in 2014 and 8.1% in 2015.

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ARM A Huge Challenge For Intel

The David-versus-Goliath rivalry between Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and ARM (NASDAQ:ARMH) continues to unfold in a way that will have a major impact on consumer and mobile computing. Intel, which has annual revenue of about $43.6 billion, manufactures its own processors and dominates the computing industry. For the past few years, it has been trying to position its Atom processor for the mobile computing industry but hasn’t been able to counter ARM’s dominance in mobile computing or lure away its licensees, such as Apple and Qualcomm. ARM, which licenses its processor architecture and has annual revenue of $631.3 million, is looking to push its low-power architecture toward traditional computing as well. Both Intel and ARM recently reported strong results.

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Nokia Reinventing Itself With Microsoft

Nokia (NYSE:NOK) recently reported first quarter results that beat estimates but gave a disappointing outlook for the second quarter as it is hit by supply chain problems due to the earthquake and related crisis in Japan. And that is not the only hurdle that Nokia has to leap over. Amidst the intense competition in the smartphone market, Nokia’s market share has been declining and for the first time has dipped below 30%. Apple has overtaken it to become the leading vendor by revenue. To reverse its declining market share, Nokia recently announced that it has signed an agreement with Microsoft to make the Windows phone platform its primary smartphone strategy. >>>

TCS, Infosys Broadening Geographic Reach

According to a market report released by the Everest Group, the global outsourcing market grew at a compounded rate of 6% from 2008 to 2010. IT outsourcing (ITO) transaction volumes grew at an annualized rate of 5% during the period, while business process outsourcing (BPO) transactions increased 12% during the same period. The market recovery was led by the banking, financial services, and insurance sectors and by North America.

The report also discussed major delivery trends and noted that Asia continued to lead offshore activity with 39 new delivery centers set up in India last year. Eastern European cities saw 32 new centers, followed by 27 in Latin America, 25 in the Philippines, 16 in China, and six in Africa. The trend seems set to continue through this year with leading Indian IT players setting up new centers in Asia and expanding hiring in emerging regions. All this is consistent with our forecasts in the Top 10 Outsourcing Trends post that the outsourcing destinations will broaden greatly this decade.

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Yahoo Focuses On Content, Not Web 3.0 – A Mistake

According to eMarketer, U.S. Internet ad revenues will increase 10% over the year to $28.5 billion in 2011. Total online ad spending in the U.S. grew 14% over the year last year to $25.80 billion. Google will remain the leader in online ad revenues, and these revenues are estimated to grow 23.5% over the year to $12.4 billion this year. Yahoo! will remain the second-biggest player, but its overall online ad revenues are expected to fall 2% over the year to $3.4 billion. Social network leader Facebook should have the biggest growth: ad revenues are expected to increase 81% over the year to $2.19 billion.

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Apple Overtakes Nokia In Revenue

Apple reported yet another stellar quarter this week driven by the momentum of its iPhone which was recently released on the Verizon network. It recently released its iPad 2 and sold every piece it made. Steve Jobs is on medical leave but the company’s products have gathered such good momentum that he is not needed to sustain it.

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Commerce A New Strategic Direction For IBM

IBM (NYSE:IBM) this week reported strong results that beat estimates driven by its server business. As a result, it raised its full-year outlook. IBM is also benefiting from its focus on analytics, cloud computing and the Smarter Planet initiative. It announced another new initiative, Smarter Commerce, to address rising customer demand in the increasingly digital commercial world.

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