Salesforce.com Kicks Off Acquisition Spree

In my most recent post on Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) and RightNow (NASDAQ:RNOW), I observed how all the major SaaS companies were growing to become consolidators. It was high time for Salesorce.com, the big daddy of SaaS, to start consolidating. Early this month, Salesforce.com, with annual revenue of $1.3 billion, made its move with the acquisition of Jigsaw, a crowd-sourced contact data provider. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

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Samsung, Motorola, And Android

According to IDC, the overall mobile phone market grew 21.7% in the first quarter while the smartphone market grew 56.7% with shipment of 54.7 million smartphones. Smartphones accounted for 18.8% of all mobile phones shipped in the first quarter. We have recently covered Apple, RIM, Palm (recently acquired by HP), and Nokia. Let’s now look at the performance of Motorola and Samsung.

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As Cloud Computing Grows, So Does Need For Security

Recent reports estimate worldwide revenue for corporate Web security solutions to grow from $1.1 billion in 2010 to over $2.1 billion in 2014. Experts believe that by 2020 there will be nearly 50 billion devices that will be able to connect to the Internet, compared with the 5 billion devices at present. >>>

Online Travel Players Hurt By Trouble In Europe And Thailand

According to recent research, online leisure and unmanaged business travel sales for the U.S. market fell 6.7% in 2009. eMarketer projects the trend to reverse in the current year with growth peaking at 7% in 2012 to reach $105.4 billion. Travel companies will also benefit from increasing travel fares. International fares are already up 23% and domestic fares up 15% over the year. But, despite the positive outlook, most travel industry players are worried about the current quarter outlook, which has been hurt by the Icelandic volcano eruption and economic and political unrest in several countries. >>>

Intuit Broadens With Healthcare SaaS Acquisition

In my most recent post on Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU), I said that the company had two choices in broadening its SaaS strategy: to broaden its market to include businesses that are outgrowing QuickBooks, and to broaden its portfolio of offerings. Intuit’s recent acquisition of SaaS healthcare company Medfusion for $91 million indicates that it is following the second option. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

HP And Dell In The Convergence Device Race

In my most recent post on both companies, I looked at the changing business mix at HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) and suggested that they should either get out of the PC business altogether or strengthen their offerings in it by getting into convergence devices with a Palm or RIM acquisition. HP recently bought Palm for $1.2 billion. Let’s take a look at how this affects their outlooks. >>>

The iPad’s Effect On The Storage Industry

With Apple’s iPad sales soaring to more than a million, shares of SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK), the leading flash memory chipmaker with annual revenue of $3.15 billion that makes the flash memory used in the iPad, are also rising. SanDisk shares have tripled over the past year, while those of the more traditional hard drive maker Seagate (NASDAQ:STX), the leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions with annual revenue of $9.8 billion, have increased by about 1.5 times. Let’s take a closer look at the performances of SanDisk and Seagate. >>>

Time Warner, Disney Post Strong Gains

Ad spending growth has triggered earnings increases in all media companies. Time (NYSE:TWX) Warner recently delivered the highest quarterly profits in the company’s history. During the quarter, it also announced the biggest revenue gain in nearly two years. >>>

SaaS Acquisition Targets For Biggies

The big names in enterprise software are focusing their acquisitions on the SaaS sector. IBM says that it is going to spend $20 billion on acquisitions over the next five years, and SaaS is going to be one of the focus areas. Let’s take a look at how the acquisition spree of these major companies could affect SaaS companies NetSuite, Citrix, Concur, and athenahealth. >>>

AMD And NVIDIA Gain Graphics Market Share

HP recently introduced seven laptops with AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) chips. This should boost AMD’s efforts to increase its laptop microprocessor share, which has been declining. According to IDC, AMD’s market share dropped  from 15% last year to 12.1% in the first quarter, while Intel dominates the market with an 87.8% share (up from 84.3%). Let’s take a closer look. >>>