Instagram, Pinterest vs. Cableorganizer

We’re back in the days of speculative investments, frothy acquisitions, monopoly money and valuation without revenue. The biggest ‘phenomenon’ to emerge out of this mood in Silicon Valley is Twitter. Among other things, it has helped reshape entire nations’ political histories. Nonetheless, it has trouble with mundane things like revenue and profits. Of course, it has no trouble whatsoever with valuation!

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LinkedIn Targets More Ad Revenue

EMarketer estimates that professional social networking site LinkedIn will see strong growth in the years to come. The researcher predicts that LinkedIn’s advertising revenues will grow to $405.6 million by the year 2014, compared with $154.6 million reported last year. They go on to predict that by 2014, U.S. advertisers will contribute 60% of LinkedIn’s advertising revenues.

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Pinterest Next In Line, After Instagram

Recently, Facebook acquired Instagram, a mobile photo-sharing platform with over 30 million users, for $1 billion. The acquisition put some of the other social media companies under the spotlight as well. Palo Alto, CA-based Pinterest is one such company, which some believe has many potential suitors or a possible IPO in the waiting.

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Cloudera the Next Splunk?

The recent successful IPO by big data player Splunk has sparked interest in some other, albeit smaller, players in the market. According to a recent report by open source analyst and researcher, Wikibon, the big data hardware and software market is estimated to be worth $5 billion. The market size is projected to grow annually at 58% for the next five years to be worth $50 billion by 2017. Cloudera plays its part as an active contributor to Hadoop, an open source framework that is considered to be among one of the biggest approaches for processing, storing and analyzing Big Data.

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Recently Listed Infoblox Looks Good

Among the recently listed technology IPOs, Santa Clara-based Infoblox is one that is doing rather well. The company is a leading provider of automated network control and appliance-based solutions that enable dynamic networks and next-generation data centers. It was founded in 1999 by the present CTO Stuart Bailey.  Inflobox offers combined real-time IP address management with automated key network control and network change and configuration management processes in purpose-built physical and virtual appliances.The solution is based on the company’s scalable and automated proprietary software that helps organizations manage network functions cost effectively and provides them with the flexibility required to scale operations.

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SAP Poised to Take On Oracle With HANA

SAP is banking on emerging technologies including big data, cloud and mobile to help drive growth in the coming quarters. The company is focusing on becoming the fastest growing database provider in the world by the year 2015 as it continues to invest in memory database technology product, HANA and additional new products.

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Nokia Banks on Lumia for Turnaround

Nokia hasn’t yet found a way out of its troubled waters. The company has been the leading handset maker since 1998 and reached a 40% global market share by 2008. However, the market share has significantly shrunk since to less than 29% last year. And market share continues to shrink. According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped 93.5 million handsets last quarter compared with Nokia’s 82.7 million. Within the smartphone segment, Samsung and Apple’s combined market share grew from 30.3% last year to 54.8% this quarter. Over the same period, Nokia saw its smartphone market share fall from 23.5% to a mere 8.2%.

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Amazon Turns Up the Heat on Competitors With Kindle Fire

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been focused on expanding its digital footprint. Finally, this quarter, the company’s efforts have borne results. During the previous quarter, digital products accounted for 9 of the top 10 products sold on Amazon.com. Digital sales were led by their recently launched Kindle Fire which has stormed through the Android-based tablet market. Increased digital sales helped Amazon’s revenues and earnings grow ahead of market estimates and sent their stock soaring.

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Netflix In Challenging Market

Market reports estimate that over 180 million users of the Internet in the US watch online video content. Within the U.S., 44 billion videos are viewed each month. Netflix remains the leader within the online video-by-subscription segment. According to NPD research, Netflix accounted for a 55% share in the digital movie rental business as of early this year. The market share has declined since the middle of last year, when the company controlled 59% of the U.S. market.

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Apple Continues to Execute on Steve’s Product Roadmap

Nothing seems to be stopping Apple’s growth path, as the company regained the title of the most valuable company in the world. Their strong product line-up helped them surge past market expectations on all fronts and quash analyst doubts of whether the company would be able to deliver after the loss of their visionary founder. Their products continue to gobble up market share. According to Nielsen’s research, while Android devices continue to lead the smartphone market share in the U.S., Apple’s devices are catching up. Android devices accounted for 48% of smartphone users in the market, while Apple’s iPhone was owned by 32.1% of users. Blackberry users were a distant third with an 11.6% contribution. However, a survey conducted on the users who purchased smartphones over the three-month period December 2011 through February 2012 saw that 48% of the buyers bought Android devices, while 43% chose the iPhone. The increasing popularity of the iPhone will help narrow the gap between them and Android devices.

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