Electronic Arts Counts on Star Wars for Their Digital Future

NPD’s latest report on U.S. retail sales of video games saw sales of gaming hardware, software, and accessories fall 25% to $495.2 in April this year. The decline was attributed to the growing importance of digital titles on mobile devices and the market’s willingness to wait for new gaming consoles. Gamers are waiting for the upgraded PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 to hit the markets and have delayed game purchases till then. Overall gaming hardware sales fell 42% over the year to $109.5 million. Software sales fell 17% to $254.3 million.

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News Corp and The New York Times Enhance Digital Offerings

According to a report released last month by the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM), The Wall Street Journal retained its position as the leading newspaper in the country with circulation growing 12% over the year to 2.38 million for the six months ended March 2013. The New York Times became the second largest newspaper in the country, with circulation growing 18% to 1.87 million during the same period. Overall, newspaper readership in the country fell 0.7% over the year. But online readership continued to increase, with the number of people reading news online increasing to 19% of total subscribers compared with 14% a year ago.

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IBM’s Surprise Earnings Miss

The latest Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast projects worldwide IT spending to grow 4.1% over the year to $3.8 trillion during the current year. These projections are a marginal improvement over the projections a quarter ago, when Gartner estimated IT spending to grow to $3.7 trillion this year. IT spending is projected to grow another 4% next year to $3.9 trillion.

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Online Travel Industry Focused on International Expansion

According to an eMarketer report, total travel sales worldwide are projected to grow from $962 billion last year to $1,131 billion by 2016. Online travel sales will account for $523 billion by the year 2016, growing from $374 billion last year. Online travel sales in the U.S. are expected to grow to $182 billion in 2016 from $151 billion last year. The European market is projected to grow from $141 billion to $176 billion over this period. Asia Pacific and Latin America see strong growth as sales more than double over the period to $131 billion and $34 billion, respectively. No wonder most online travel stocks are focusing on international expansion.

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Finland’s Supercell Shows Strong Growth in iPad Gaming

According to a report by Transparency Market Research, Gaming Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Growth, Share and Forecast 2011-2015, the global gaming market was pegged at $70.5 billion in 2011 and is projected to grow 14% annually through 2015 to $117.9 billion. Growth is projected to be driven by the Asia Pacific markets and the increasing penetration of smartphone-like mobile devices worldwide. Another report estimates that by 2015, Asia and Europe would account for 87% of revenues for online and mobile games by 2015, with China accounting for 32% of the market.

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Groupon on the Rebound?

After reporting results that forced their CEO to quit, daily deals market leader, Groupon (Nasdaq:GRPN) seems to have figured its way out. Its stock price is on the rise, but it still is significantly short of their $20 IPO list price. Like the market, I remain skeptical about the company’s future and would like to see it perform more consistently on a proven business model before I make a favorable judgment about them.

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Blue Nile and WebMD Expand Offerings

According to recent IDEX research, last year sales of fine jewelry and watches in the U.S. reached a record high of $71.3 billion, growing 6% over the year. For the year, sales of fine jewelry grew 6% to $61.9 billion in the U.S.

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Fusion-io’s Inorganic Growth

According to a market report, Enterprise SSDs: Technologies and Markets, the market for enterprise solid state drive (SSD) is projected to grow 59% annually from 382,000 units in 2011 to 3.9 million units by the year 2016. The report predicts that enterprise SSD market revenues will grow at an average annual rate of 43% to $3.5 billion by 2016, up from $582 million in 2011.
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Athenahealth’s Expanding Product Roadmap

According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the electronic medical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR) industry in the U.S. is estimated to be worth $6 billion by 2015. The report projects an annual growth rate of 18% over the five-year period 2010 through 2015.

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LinkedIn’s Product Expansion

According to market reports, the worldwide talent acquisition and staffing services was estimated to be worth $27 billion last year.  LinkedIn (Nasdaq:LNKD) may be the largest professional network, but it still has a huge market opportunity to tap into, and the company is focusing on expanding their products to get a bigger piece of the pie.

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