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. >>>

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. >>>

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. >>>