HomeAway Improves Offerings To Help Bring Customers Online

The $85 billion vacation rental market is projected to grow 13% annually. But the industry faces many concerns that analysts believe are limiting its growth potential. A study conducted to understand the problems facing the industry found that 46.3% of those surveyed have never used an online service to rent a vacation home in the past three years. This high figure does suggest that the industry has significant potential.

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MercadoLibre: Acquisition Target for Amazon?

According to researcher, eMarketer, business-to-consumer sales in Latin America, excluding Brazil, are projected to reach $15.2 billion by the end of the current year and will grow to $28.5 billion by 2015. Overall, analysts believe Latin America e-commerce will grow 20% annually, driven by increased Internet adoption by both consumers and marketers. Currently, less than 2% of retail products sold in the region are available online, pointing to a big opportunity for market growth. Brazil is another high-growth market with analysts estimating e-commerce sales in the country to grow more than 25% this year.

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Jive Software Going After Bigger Customers

According to Gartner, the enterprise software market is a $285 billion market. Within this, according to IDC estimates the enterprise social networking market will be worth $10.3 billion by 2013. The market remains largely untapped. Studies have revealed that just over 50% of enterprises have implemented some social networking tools.

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Online Music Business Models: Broken?

The U.S. radio market is expected to be worth $37 billion. Apart from traditional media companies, the market is being tapped by online radio players. Pandora, a recently listed player, claims that it has access to 5.5% of the U.S. radio market – significant growth over previous year’s share of 2.7%. But the increasing market share has not translated to improved margins. Like last week’s Tech Stock’s company Yelp, Pandora has yet to turn in a profit, and now analysts are doubting if the company would ever be able to report one.

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Yelp IPOs, Triples Revenues In Three Years, But Still No Profit

A number of technology IPOs continue to flow to the market this year. Although Facebook’s IPO may be the most anticipated, another social media player, Yelp, tested markets this year. Through their offering last week, the company raised $107 million by selling their stock at $15 a share. Yet their monetization capabilities still raise concerns.

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Online Travel: A Third of the World’s Travel Sales

According to PhoCusWright’s Global Online Travel Overview report, second edition, online travel sales will account for a third of the world’s travel sales by the end of 2012. Online leisure, or the unmanaged business travel market, is projected to be worth more than $313 billion this year. The report also projects an increase in online penetration rates in Asia Pacific and Latin America to help drive growth in travel bookings. Online travel players are growing internationally to respond to this change.

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Meg Whitman Asks For Patience As HP Changes Course

HP’s troubles just don’t seem to be ending. Although the company may have remained the market leader in global PC shipments last quarter by shipping more than 15 million units, sales for the quarter were 16% below the previous year’s sales. IDC and Gartner estimate that last quarter, overall PC shipments fell 0.1% over the year to 92.7 million units. To add to HP’s worries, declining revenues are hurting margins and the stock price.

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Brightcove Looks To Harvest Bumper Crop From Online Video

According to market reports, Google remains the leader in online videos with gross revenues of more than $1 billion. Analysts expect Google’s online video gross revenues to cross $2 billion by 2013. Analysts project the revenues from online video segment to be worth $8 billion worldwide by the year 2012. They also estimate that the market for video content will also experience similar growth. By the end of the current year, the market for technology services such as those provided by video platform providers like Brightcove is expected to grow to $1 billion for the year.

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Rovio’s Astronomical Valuation

In their report Market Trends: Gaming Ecosystem, 2011, Gartner estimated that the video game industry will grow to $112 billion by 2015 from $67 billion in 2010 and an estimated $74 billion in 2011. But within the industry, mobile gaming will command the fastest growth by expanding its market share from 15% in 2010 to 20% in 2015. Mobile games developer Rovio is counting on this growth.

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Intuit Reaching Out To Farmers In India

Intuit (Nasdaq:INTU) recently released market data on fiscal year 2012 consumer tax offerings. According to their reports, as of February 18, the company reported 10% growth in total TurboTax federal unit sales. Intuit continues to dominate the online market and saw sales of TurboTax Online units grow 19% over the year. Recently, Intuit also reported their first ever second quarter of revenues that surpassed $1 billion, and an India strategy that raises eyebrows.

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