The iPad’s Effect On The Storage Industry

With Apple’s iPad sales soaring to more than a million, shares of SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK), the leading flash memory chipmaker with annual revenue of $3.15 billion that makes the flash memory used in the iPad, are also rising. SanDisk shares have tripled over the past year, while those of the more traditional hard drive maker Seagate (NASDAQ:STX), the leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions with annual revenue of $9.8 billion, have increased by about 1.5 times. Let’s take a closer look at the performances of SanDisk and Seagate. >>>

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Time Warner, Disney Post Strong Gains

Ad spending growth has triggered earnings increases in all media companies. Time (NYSE:TWX) Warner recently delivered the highest quarterly profits in the company’s history. During the quarter, it also announced the biggest revenue gain in nearly two years. >>>

SaaS Acquisition Targets For Biggies

The big names in enterprise software are focusing their acquisitions on the SaaS sector. IBM says that it is going to spend $20 billion on acquisitions over the next five years, and SaaS is going to be one of the focus areas. Let’s take a look at how the acquisition spree of these major companies could affect SaaS companies NetSuite, Citrix, Concur, and athenahealth. >>>

AMD And NVIDIA Gain Graphics Market Share

HP recently introduced seven laptops with AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) chips. This should boost AMD’s efforts to increase its laptop microprocessor share, which has been declining. According to IDC, AMD’s market share dropped  from 15% last year to 12.1% in the first quarter, while Intel dominates the market with an 87.8% share (up from 84.3%). Let’s take a closer look. >>>

For Now, Advantage Cisco As Networking Sector Consolidates

In my most recent post on Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), we observed how the company is expanding in adjacent markets through acquisitions, while its competitors, including HP and 3Com, are consolidating to attack Cisco’s core networking business. In this post, we will look at the company’s recent performance and try to gauge the impact of both the integration of its acquisitions and of rising competition.

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Ad Revenue Declines Slow For Newspaper Players

The purse strings controlling ad budgets have loosened, and for 2010, overall ad budgets in the United States are expected to grow 1.2% over the year to $368 billion. The country’s newspaper giants are already seeing numbers improve. Additionally, analysts expect that during this year, digital advertisement spending will contribute 32.5% of the total ad spending, compared to 30.3% for print. This will be the first time ever that digital ads account for more ad spending than print ads. >>>

Acquisition Spree Continues In Talent SaaS

In February of last quarter, SuccessFactors (NASDAQ:SFSF) made its first acquisition move by buying Inform Business Impact, a SaaS vendor in HR, talent analytics, and workforce planning, for about $40.5 million. With its first acquisition not yet closed, SucessFactors is continuing its spree with the recent purchase of CubeTree, a social enterprise platform, for about $50 million. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

EMC, VMWare And The Cloud

According to a recent Morgan Stanley report, technology spending is beginning to grow again. After having fallen 1.8% last year, spending is poised to increase 3.2% in the current year, suggesting a return to normal spending patterns. Analysts expect that storage equipment and virtualization software will attract a bigger portion of these funds. IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Software Virtualization Tracker reported that 18.2% of all new servers shipped in Q409 were virtualized, compared with 15.2% a year ago. For 2009, new virtualized server shipments declined 5% over the year. However, for Q409, the number increased for the first time in the year to over 352,000 units. This is good news for VMWare (NYSE:VMW), the leader in the segment. >>>

Payroll Sector Improving

The employment situation in the Unites States is slowly improving: for the third straight month, ADP (NASDAQ:ADP) reported positive job growth. According to the company’s national employment report, private sector jobs increased by 32,000 in April, more than the 20,000 expected by economists. This is a positive sign for the payroll industry. The official report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which includes public sector jobs, confirms this positive trend with the fourth consecutive report of job growth and addition of about 290,000 jobs in the month. Let’s take a closer look at the recent performance of Paychex (NASDAQ:PAYX) and ADP. >>>

Comcast And Viacom Looking Up

Analysts project global ad spending to grow 2.2% during the current year, a significant improvement from the earlier projections of growth of a mere 0.9%. Growth is projected to continue at 4.1% in 2011 and 5.3% in 2012. Last year, the more developed regions of the world, that is, North America, Western Europe and Japan, witnessed a 12.1% decline in ad spending. Ad spending in these regions is expected to stabilize this year, with growth returning in 2011. In 2010, ad spending in North America is expected to fall by 1.5% to $155 billion and resume growth to $162 billion by 2012. >>>