Expensive Mistakes And Rising Costs Plague Netflix

In the past quarter, Netflix has managed to not only disappoint its investors but also its customers. Contrary to other online players such as Hulu, which has added customers at a rapid pace during the quarter, Netflix’s loss of subscribers is a shock. The stock price has fallen 75% since the all-time high it attained this summer.

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New Kindle Heats Up E-Reader Market

According to a Goldman Sachs report published earlier this year, Kindle accounts for 67% market share [of e-readers] in the U.S., followed by Nook with a 22% share. Amazon also leads in digital book sales with 58% market share, followed by Barnes & Noble’s at 27% and Apple at 9%. The way Amazon is rolling out its new Kindle line-up, it looks as though their market share is going to grow much higher in the coming years.
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Comcast, Viacom Shifting With The Times

The cable TV industry continues to face stiff competition. With players like Hulu eating into other player’s share of content and subscriber base, the war on cable remains heated. Furthermore, Microsoft recently announced the plans to offer TV content on Xbox 360 for Xbox 360 Live users, making it possible for people to watch programming even without a set-top box. Despite such market circumstances, players continued to surpass market expectations.

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XBox Pushes Microsoft Deeply Into Home Entertainment

Gartner’s third quarter study on PC shipments reported that global PC shipments grew 3.2% over the year to 91.8 million units, compared with the earlier projected estimates of 5.1% growth for the quarter. The continuing weakness in the U.S. and EMEA markets are contributing to this slow growth. U.S. PC shipments grew a mere 1.1% over the year to 17.8 million units. Gartner believes that the increasing popularity of Media tablets and smartphones is pushing sales away from the PC segment. Within the U.S., Apple reported the strongest growth among the top five vendors with shipments growing 21.5% over the year driven by strong growth in sales of MacBook Air. EMEA PC shipments of 26.6 million units reported a 2.9% decline over the year. Emerging markets helped drive worldwide growth. Asia-Pacific markets grew 6% to 31.8 million units and Latin America grew 19.6%.

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IBM Looks Solid

Market analysts do not foresee a steep recovery in IT spending as both the U.S. and European markets continue their struggle to come out of the economic crisis. According to RBC experts, IT spending will grow a mere 4%-5% over the year in 2011. Gartner also expects slower growth in the coming years. Their recent study estimates IT spending in 2012 to grow 3.9% over the year to $2.7 trillion in 2012. For the current year, Gartner expects IT spending to grow 5.9% over the year.

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Ad Revenues Not Sufficient In Monetizing Twitter

Twitter is expected to hit between $140 million and $165 million revenue in 2011, more than three times its revenue of $45 million in 2010. The company began to sharpen its focus on monetization only last year with its ad services: Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets, and Promoted Accounts. It recently raised $800 million in an investment round that valued Twitter at $8.4 billion. Let’s take a closer look.

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Apple After Steve Jobs

Fourteen years ago, Apple was going through a rough patch and its stock was trading at below $5 levels. Steve Jobs took the reins again and made Apple the most valuable company on the planet. Sadly, Apple’s former leader passed away this month. Though Jobs had been away from Apple’s daily affairs for a while, he remained a major influence for the company. A spiritual leader of sorts, almost.

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Yahoo In Limbo

According to eMarketer, Yahoo is expected to command 13.1% of display ads this year compared with 14.4% a year ago, as social networking leader Facebook’s share is expected to climb to 16.3% from 12.2% last year. U.S. online ad spending is to grow 20% this year to $31.3 billion, but given Yahoo’s situation, they may not benefit as much from this growth.

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