Networking Sector Laggards

According to Infonetics Research, the worldwide service provider switch and router market declined 5% in Q1 to $2.95 billion. Vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson reported revenue declines due to component and supply challenges. However, the North American market was up 29%, and Cisco increased its service provider router revenue by 33% from last year. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

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CDN Market Overview

Last quarter, we saw how Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM) has been getting aggressive in its pricing. This strategy is paying off, as Netflix chose Akamai as its primary content delivery network (CDN). Online video has been a strong growth driver for the CDN market. Mobile Web is also a strong growth driver. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

New Markets For Autodesk, Informatica

Jon Peddie Research estimates the CAD software market to have decreased 23% over the year in 2009 to $5 billion. While growth is expected to return in 2010, analysts don’t expect the market to reach its peak 2008 levels of $6.7 billion. The 2010 CAD market is expected to grow 5% to $5.4 billion with higher growth projected in 2013–2014. Autodesk’s (NASDAQ:ASDK) recent performance also seems to be reflecting the current year’s upbeat trend. >>>

Murdoch’s Paywalls

A recently released study estimates U.S. advertising spending to have grown 5.1% over the year in the first quarter of 2010. This is the first quarterly increase since the first quarter of 2008. Ad spending was driven by spending by the auto, retail, and financial services sectors. Television media saw the greatest growth in ad spending of 10.5% over the year. Overall radio media ad spending grew 7.4% over the year, and Internet display ad spending grew 5%. But print ads remained a disappointment, spending for which fell 3.2% over the year for magazines and 3.7% over the year for newspapers. >>>

Salesforce.com Kicks Off Acquisition Spree

In my most recent post on Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) and RightNow (NASDAQ:RNOW), I observed how all the major SaaS companies were growing to become consolidators. It was high time for Salesorce.com, the big daddy of SaaS, to start consolidating. Early this month, Salesforce.com, with annual revenue of $1.3 billion, made its move with the acquisition of Jigsaw, a crowd-sourced contact data provider. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Samsung, Motorola, And Android

According to IDC, the overall mobile phone market grew 21.7% in the first quarter while the smartphone market grew 56.7% with shipment of 54.7 million smartphones. Smartphones accounted for 18.8% of all mobile phones shipped in the first quarter. We have recently covered Apple, RIM, Palm (recently acquired by HP), and Nokia. Let’s now look at the performance of Motorola and Samsung.

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As Cloud Computing Grows, So Does Need For Security

Recent reports estimate worldwide revenue for corporate Web security solutions to grow from $1.1 billion in 2010 to over $2.1 billion in 2014. Experts believe that by 2020 there will be nearly 50 billion devices that will be able to connect to the Internet, compared with the 5 billion devices at present. >>>

Online Travel Players Hurt By Trouble In Europe And Thailand

According to recent research, online leisure and unmanaged business travel sales for the U.S. market fell 6.7% in 2009. eMarketer projects the trend to reverse in the current year with growth peaking at 7% in 2012 to reach $105.4 billion. Travel companies will also benefit from increasing travel fares. International fares are already up 23% and domestic fares up 15% over the year. But, despite the positive outlook, most travel industry players are worried about the current quarter outlook, which has been hurt by the Icelandic volcano eruption and economic and political unrest in several countries. >>>

Intuit Broadens With Healthcare SaaS Acquisition

In my most recent post on Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU), I said that the company had two choices in broadening its SaaS strategy: to broaden its market to include businesses that are outgrowing QuickBooks, and to broaden its portfolio of offerings. Intuit’s recent acquisition of SaaS healthcare company Medfusion for $91 million indicates that it is following the second option. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

HP And Dell In The Convergence Device Race

In my most recent post on both companies, I looked at the changing business mix at HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) and suggested that they should either get out of the PC business altogether or strengthen their offerings in it by getting into convergence devices with a Palm or RIM acquisition. HP recently bought Palm for $1.2 billion. Let’s take a look at how this affects their outlooks. >>>