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Technology Stocks
Coursera’s Business Model Challenge
According to a report, The U.S. Market for Self-Paced eLearning Products and Services: 2010-2015 Forecast and Analysis, by market research firm Ambient Insight 2015, the number of post-secondary students in the U.S. who are taking online classes will rise from 12.36 million in 2010 to 21.13 million by 2015. Annual growth over the five-year period is expected to be 11%. While many students will continue to take both online and offline classes, the largest growth is projected among students taking exclusively online courses. The report projected annual growth of 23% for students taking only online courses; this is up from 1.37 million in 2010 to 3.86 million in 2015. The online education industry will benefit from the growth of massive open online courses (MOOCS), which are usually free courses offered to a big online population.
Groupon’s Mason Is Fired
If analysts were expecting the daily deals market leader, Groupon (Nasdaq:GRPN), to show impressive results during the holiday quarter last year, they were surely disappointed. According to market research conducted by Manta prior to the holiday quarter, 82% of small businesses surveyed claimed that they had no desire of running deals during the holiday season last year. And it is not just the holiday season that is affected. According to a Raymond James survey of merchants who have used daily deals services earlier, 39% claimed that they did not want to run another daily promotion due to the high costs and low repeat customer rate. Thirty-two percent of the merchants surveyed reported the deals to be loss-making ones.
Fusion-io Reduces Dependency on Apple and Facebook
IDC projects that the worldwide big data technology and services market will grow 40% annually from 2010 to 2015 to reach $16.9 billion in 2015. The growth in big data is expected to be about seven times the growth of the overall information and communications technology market. Within the market, the server segment is expected to see annualized growth of 27%. Further, the software market for big data is projected to grow 34% annually, while the most growth will be seen in the storage market at 61% annual growth. Flash memory maker Fusion-io (NYSE:FIO) is among the leading storage solutions provider for big data companies. To cater to the growing demand for storage products, Fusion is expanding their product offerings and seeing strong results.
Jive’s Intense Competitive Landscape
Recently MarketsandMarkets released a report, Enterprise Social Software Market – Global Advancements, Demand Analysis and Worldwide Market Forecasts (2013-2018), to track the growth of the enterprise social software market. The report estimates that the global enterprise social software market will grow from $721.3 million last year to $6.18 billion by 2018, recording growth of 45% annually. Growth will be driven by increased adoption of the tools by the high tech and telecommunications vertical. North America will hold the maximum revenue share in the market, and Asia Pacific will drive high growth in the market by region.
HP’s Slow Turnaround
Gartner’s Q4 worldwide PC shipments report may have painted a picture of dismal performance for PC shipments, which fell 4.9% over the year to 90.3 million units, but for HP, it was still a better quarter than previous ones. After having slipped from the leading vendor position in the third quarter last year, HP regained their lead in the final quarter. During the quarter, HP commanded 16.2% of the global market share, compared with 15.5% both a year and a quarter ago. Lenovo, which had managed to gain a marginal lead in the previous quarter with 15.7% share, slipped to the second largest vendor with 15.5% of the market share. But HP should not be complacent because over the year, their shipment volume dropped 0.5% to 14.6 million, while Lenovo registered a strong 8.2% increase to 13.98 million units.
Online Real Estate Sector Benefits from Housing Market Improvement
Market reports confirm that the housing market in the U.S. is beginning to show signs of improvement. According to the National Association of Realtors, in January sales of existing homes grew 0.4% over December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.92 million. The housing inventory also shrunk to its lowest since December 1999, with inventory falling 4.9% over December and 25.3% over the previous year to 1.74 million homes. At the current selling pace, the inventory is expected to be exhausted within four months. Low inventory levels and 40% growth in buyer interest is also helping drive prices upward. The median national price grew 12% over the year to $173,600 in January. The median listing time for sales also fell 28% to 71 days in January. Improving housing market conditions are helping the performance of the online real estate sector.
Dell Goes Private to Reinvent Itself
Gartner’s worldwide PC shipment report for the final quarter of last year showed that PC shipments fell 4.9% over the year to 90.3 million units; the decrease was driven by increasing adoption of tablets. PC shipments in the U.S. fell 2.1% over the year to 17.5 million units in the quarter. The EMEA region did not fare any better, as PC shipments fell 10% to 28.1 million units, and shipments in Asia Pacific fell 1.8% to 29.9 million units. Gartner believes that the decline in computer sales was accelerated by the availability of low-cost tablets during the previous year. PC sales refused to pick up during the holiday season as consumers preferred to give tablets instead of PCs as gifts. Earlier, analysts were hopeful that the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 8 would help drive growth in PC shipments. However, the muted reaction received to the new OS did not do much good for the industry.
Disney’s Digital Growth
According to a report by the Digital Entertainment Group, the U.S. home entertainment market grew 2.5% a year ago to $4.5 billion during the first quarter last year. The home entertainment market includes purchases, subscriptions, and rentals of DVDs, Blu-ray discs and online content. For the 12-month period, sales for the market were down 2.1% to $18 billion. But the quarter was the second consecutive quarter of growth, suggesting a recovery on the way. Twenty-three percent growth in sales of Blu-ray discs was offset by the continued decline in DVD sales. Overall, sales of both Blu-ray and DVD packages fell 0.6% over the year to $2.1 billion. The biggest growth was seen in revenues from online subscriptions for services such as Netflix and Hulu, which reported a fivefold increase to $548.6 million. Entertainment giant The Walt Disney Company is also rapidly adapting to digital trends.