Samsung Loses The Top Spot

Last quarter Samsung became the leading vendor of smartphones, but its reign at the top was short-lived. Apple shot back to the top with record sales of 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, and Samsung is close behind with an estimated 36.5 million smartphones sold.

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Golden Apple

After a brief fumble last quarter, Apple is back with a bang. The new version of the iPhone has been met with strong acceptance, and Apple beat Android phones in the U.S. to become the leading smartphone device in the market. According to Kantar Worldpanel research, iPhone sales grew 128% in the last quarter of 2011 to 37 million units. Within the U.S., iPhones have a 44.9% market share, marginally ahead of Android’s 44.8% market share. Android continues to dominate in the European markets, but Apple is catching up. In the U.K., during the December quarter last year, Apple’s share grew 34% compared with 22% a year ago.

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Yahoo In Disarray, Business Declining

Yahoo’s management changes continue. The company recently replaced former CEO Carol Bartz with ex-PayPal executive Scott Thompson, and a few weeks later, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the board. But it is not just senior leadership that is leaving; Yahoo is also losing out on market share as they fail to match up to the might of Google and Facebook. According to eMarketer, Yahoo’s share of the online ad market fell to 11% percent last year, compared with 13.3% a year ago. During the same period, Google’s share grew to 40.8% from 38.5%, and Facebook’s share increased to 6.4% from 4.6%.

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IBM Focuses on Analytics

Earlier this year, Gartner released their report on worldwide IT spending, and the numbers don’t look so good. The analyst downgraded growth expectations in 2012 from 4.6% to 3.7%, attributing the decline to continuing global recession, the euro crisis, and the impact of Thailand’s floods on hard-disk drive production. Spending on IT products and services in 2012 is now expected to grow to $3.8 trillion with spending on Telecom Services growing 2.3% over the year and amounting to $1.74 trillion. Spending on Telecom Equipment and Enterprise Software will see the highest growth of 6.9% and 6.4%, respectively, to end the year with revenues of $475 billion and $285 billion. Computing hardware spending is projected to grow 5.1% over the year to $424 billion, while IT services will see comparatively slower growth of 3.1% to $874 billion.

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Why Is Microsoft At 52-Week High?

Microsoft estimates that last quarter, consumer PC sales fell 6% over the year. Surprisingly, the decline was led by the falling sales of netbooks, which are being replaced by iPads and the recently released Kindle Fire. Excluding sales of netbooks, PC sales would have reported growth of 2% last quarter. A year ago, netbooks accounted for nearly 8% of the PC market. However, recent reports suggest that they account for only 2%. In addition, macroeconomic factors of supply chain shortages because of floods in Thailand and the continuing recession that hurt market growth. Gartner too estimates that global PC sales fell 1.4% over the year last quarter and were particularly hurt by the shortage of hard disk drives because of the flooding in Thailand.

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Online Advertising Will Overtake Print in 2012

According to eMarketer’s latest report, this year, U.S. online advertising will exceed print-based advertising spending for the first time. Online advertising spending is projected to grow 20% this year to $40 billion, while print advertising is expected to decline 6% over the year to $33.8 billion. Last year, online advertising revenues also grew more than 20%. Online advertising spending is expected to grow to $62 billion by 2016, while print advertising will continue to decline during the same period to $32.3 billion. Below is an infographic charting the growth of online advertising, courtesy of CNBC.

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Twitter Still Far From An IPO

With the Facebook IPO expected in May of this year, speculations regarding Twitter’s IPO have come to the fore. Twitter is estimated to have hit revenue of $139.5 million in 2011, more than three times its revenue of $45 million in 2010. In September 2011, Twitter raised $800 million in an investment round that valued the company at $8.4 billion. Though Twitter has started to generate revenue, it is still vastly unprofitable, and it is hard to justify the company’s sky-high valuation or an IPO. >>>

Amsterdam-Based AVG Files For IPO On NYSE

Last week, antivirus maker AVG Technologies filed with the SEC to list on the New York Stock Exchange for an IPO. The Amsterdam-based company was founded in 1991 to keep computer systems safe from virus attacks. Today they help more than 106 million consumers across 185 countries ward off online attacks and provide real-time defenses against real-time threats on desktop, laptop, and mobile devices.

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Newspaper Digital Subscriptions Gaining Steam

In the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s recently released circulation figures for the six months ending September 2011, the bureau not only compiled circulation figures for print newspapers but also released a list for digital subscriptions. According to their report, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times were among the leading print papers with the Journal reporting nearly 2.1 million subscribers, followed by USA Today’s 1.78 million and The New York Times’s 1.15 million during the period. As expected, digital editions continued to increase in popularity and the number of subscribers increased 47% over the period. The Journal remained the leader in the digital segment with more than 537,000 subscribers.

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Dropbox IPO Also Coming Soon?

According to a recent IDC report, Worldwide Enterprise Storage for Public and Private Cloud 2011-2015 Forecast: Enabling Public Cloud Service Providers and Private Clouds, cloud computing will drive IT spending over the next five years. Overall spending by public cloud service providers on storage hardware, software, and professional services is projected to grow annually at 23.6% from 2010-2015. During the same period, enterprise spending on storage for the private cloud is projected to grow at CAGR of 28.9%. Together, both the public and private cloud storage segments are expected to account for $22.6 billion in spending worldwide. But it is not only the enterprises that use cloud storage services. Many individuals and smaller groups are also reaping the benefits of being able to store data on the cloud.

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