Leapfrog Continues To Execute

According to market researcher The NPD Group, traditional toy sales in the U.S. remained relatively flat during the first half of 2010 with total sales of $7.771 billion compared with $7.748 billion a year ago. In Europe’s five largest toy markets, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K., revenue increased 5% over the year led by 8% growth in the U.K. Meanwhile, electronic toy maker Leapfrog (NASDAQ:LF) has been having a good run.

>>>

Featured Videos

Alcatel Finally Back to Growth

EDA Players At Annual Highs

Gartner forecasts worldwide semiconductor revenue for 2010 to increase 31.5% over the year to $300 billion. In 2011, growth is expected to slow significantly to 4.6% to $314 billion. During the year, the memory segment is expected to post the strongest growth, with revenues increasing 49.8%. According to the report, smartphones, mobile PCs, and media tablets will help fuel semiconductor growth. Semiconductor revenue from media tablets will increase from $2.4bn in 2010 to $17.8 billion in 2014, and revenues from the mobile phones will grow 23% over the year in 2010 to $48.7 billion and another 13.6% in 2011 to $55.4 billion. IDC also projected single-digit growth for the industry in 2011 with semiconductor revenues projected to grow 9% over the year to $302 billion in 2011. According to IDC, tablets, e-readers, and other such consumer electronics will help drive consumer semiconductor revenues increase 10% over the year in 2011. Amid such positive numbers, the leading EDA players have shown encouraging results.

>>>

Tablet Effect On Storage Industry

Apple’s iPad and a slew of tablets from other vendors like Dell, HP, and even RIM are set to take market from PCs. While Sandisk (NASDAQ:SNDK), the leading flash memory chipmaker, is set to benefit from this trend, the leader in hard drive and storage solutions, Seagate (NASDAQ:STX), is facing a setback and was considering a buyout as a strategic option. >>>

SaaS Growth Story Back On Track

Over the past two weeks, we have looked at the CRM and talent management sectors in the SaaS market. The talent management sector is consolidating at a fast pace and even SaaS CRM is seeing acquisitions in social networking. In August, Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS), a leader in virtualization, acquired VMLogix, a provider of virtualization management for private and public clouds, while NetSuite (NYSE:N) and Concur (NASDAQ:CNQR) have not had any M&A activity in the recent past. >>>

Shifts In The Online Jobs Market

The Monster Employment Index has been on the rise and the November Index reported the tenth consecutive month of growth, reporting 13% growth over the year. Compared with October, the index slipped two points to 134 attributed to seasonal trends. More recently, though, for the week ended November 27, the U.S. jobless claims rose by 26,000 to a seasonally adjusted 436,000, and analysts claim that the number is making a slow recovery. The four-week moving average of claims stood at 431,000, the lowest since August 2008.

>>>

The 4G Race

Apple started selling the iPad on Verizon on October 28. This makes the Verizon iPhone more of a reality. The Verizon CDMA iPhone was expected in early 2011, but there hasn’t yet been any official confirmation. Meanwhile, Verizon has rolled out its LTE 4G network in 38 cities. Sprint has already launched its WiMax 4G network, which is available in 60 cities, and the company is seeing strong demand for its Samsung Epic and HTC EVO 4G devices. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Infineon Looks Good After Its Wireless Sale to Intel

Both chipmakers Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL) and Infineon (NYSE:IFX; IFX.DE) last month reported strong results for their recent quarter as demand for their chips increased in an improving economy. Infineon, which recently sold its wireless unit to Intel, proposed its first dividend payout in a decade. >>>

Netflix Needs To Improve Streaming Quality

Sandvine’s report on streaming services in the U.S. claims that Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) represents more than 20% of downstream traffic during peak times and is heaviest between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.  The growing popularity of the streaming service is already taking a toll on Netflix’s streaming capabilities, and the service recorded a big outage earlier this quarter. But, despite outages, the company continued to report stellar quarterly performance.

>>>

Talent Management Continues To Consolidate

The talent management sector continued to consolidate the past quarter as Salary.com was acquired by Kennexa, Learn.com by Taleo (NASDAQ:TLEO), and YouCalc by SuccessFactors (NASDAQ:SFSF). I earlier suggested Salary.com as an attractive acquisition prospect for Taleo or SuccessFactors, the leaders in the talent management sector. >>>