IBM Looks Solid

Market analysts do not foresee a steep recovery in IT spending as both the U.S. and European markets continue their struggle to come out of the economic crisis. According to RBC experts, IT spending will grow a mere 4%-5% over the year in 2011. Gartner also expects slower growth in the coming years. Their recent study estimates IT spending in 2012 to grow 3.9% over the year to $2.7 trillion in 2012. For the current year, Gartner expects IT spending to grow 5.9% over the year.

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Ad Revenues Not Sufficient In Monetizing Twitter

Twitter is expected to hit between $140 million and $165 million revenue in 2011, more than three times its revenue of $45 million in 2010. The company began to sharpen its focus on monetization only last year with its ad services: Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets, and Promoted Accounts. It recently raised $800 million in an investment round that valued Twitter at $8.4 billion. Let’s take a closer look.

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Apple After Steve Jobs

Fourteen years ago, Apple was going through a rough patch and its stock was trading at below $5 levels. Steve Jobs took the reins again and made Apple the most valuable company on the planet. Sadly, Apple’s former leader passed away this month. Though Jobs had been away from Apple’s daily affairs for a while, he remained a major influence for the company. A spiritual leader of sorts, almost.

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Yahoo In Limbo

According to eMarketer, Yahoo is expected to command 13.1% of display ads this year compared with 14.4% a year ago, as social networking leader Facebook’s share is expected to climb to 16.3% from 12.2% last year. U.S. online ad spending is to grow 20% this year to $31.3 billion, but given Yahoo’s situation, they may not benefit as much from this growth.

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Dolby’s Market Cap Takes A Hit

During its third quarter earnings call, Dolby (NYSE:DLB), the industry leader in audio technology, announced that Microsoft will not be including Dolby’s technology in Windows 8. Dolby says this would affect its licensing revenue only in 2013, but its shares have plunged 30% since the announcement. Let’s take a closer look.

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Google Continues To Dominate Search Advertising

Media researcher MagnaGlobal estimates that search-based advertising will grow 23% over the year in 2011 to reach $37.7 billion. The researcher further estimates that Internet ad spending will climb 20% this year. comScore data for September indicates that within search in the U.S., Google’s market share continued to rise to 65.3% from 64.8% a month ago, with Yahoo following at 15.5% and Microsoft at 14.7%.

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Leapfrog Enters Tablet Market

NPD’s Kids and Entertainment Content – 2011 Edition, reports that for every dollar children aged 2 to 14 spent on entertainment content, 79% was directed toward physical format content, while 21% was spent on digital content. In 2009, digital content represented 15% of each dollar spent by children on entertainment. Seventy-two percent of the content purchased comprises music and is followed by movies, video games, television shows, books, and apps. Over the past two years, digitally acquired content has grown the fastest for games at 17%, followed by music’s growth of 14% and movie download growth at 13% annually. Digital growth is driving gaming companies to focus on improving their digital solutions.

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Vistaprint Continues Steady Growth

According to a survey of 750 micro business owners in the U.S., 64% of respondents indicated that they were planning to invest in marketing and business promotion expenses during the year. Eighty-eight percent of owners are planning to increase spending over with the previous year, and 34% suggested they would expand the use of social media/networking during the year. Increasing marketing spending by small and micro businesses is helping to drive growth among online print supplies and services provider, Vistaprint (NASDAQ:VPRT).

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Brightcove’s IPO Prospects

Market reports estimate the outsourced online video platform market to be worth $5.8 billion by the year 2015. For 2011, the market is estimated to be worth $2.3 billion. A study by Cisco Systems revealed that Internet video will amount for 40% of all consumer Internet traffic worldwide during the year. By 2015, that percentage is expected to grow to 62%, making the online video market a booming one.

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Bazaarvoice’s IPO Prospects

Within the U.S. alone, Forrester estimates social media marketing to be worth $3.1 billion by the year 2014. The market was worth $0.72 billion in 2009, which makes for a projected annual growth rate of 34%. Texas-based Bazaarvoice is a leading marketing company that is helping more than 1,200 brands tap into the social media market.

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