eBay Rides On PayPal’s Strength

In the face of the economic downturn, e-commerce seems to be holding its ground. Initial reports indicate modest, mid-teens growth in 2009 over 2008. Consumer e-commerce spending for the Christmas holiday and post-holiday season through early January 2010 was roughly $25.5 billion, an almost 4% increase over 2008. Cyber Monday, November 30, boasted sales of $887 million. The U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce estimates that U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2009 totaled $32.0 billion, an increase of 3.9% from the second quarter of 2009. >>>

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Only Facebook Can Match Google’s Run

According to a recent comScore study, the global search market grew 46% annually to more than 131 billion searches in December 2009. The United States is the world’s largest search market with 22.7 billion searches or approximately 17% market share. China was ranked second with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the UK with 6.2 billion. Google sites dominated the global search market with 87.8 billion searches in December 2009, or 66.8% of the market. Google sites gained 58% in December 2009 from December 2008. Google was followed by Yahoo!, Baidu, and Microsoft sites. Microsoft sites gained 70% to 4.1 billion searches following the launch of the company’s new search engine, Bing. >>>

IBM Business Remix Boosts Earnings

This week, IBM (NYSE:IBM) reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2009 results that beat estimates. Although it was modest, IBM did record slight revenue growth in the fourth quarter after more than a year of no growth. The company’s focus on software and services has helped it to boost its earnings.  >>>

Infosys Moves Beyond Body Shopping

In a recent discussion of Accenture, I talked about the recovery in the IT services and consulting space, which was driven by small and medium-sized deals in application maintenance and development, infrastructure outsourcing, risk management, data analytics, cost cutting, and business process outsourcing (BPO). The recovery seems to continue, judging from recent results. On January 14, SAP announced that it beat its revenues and margins forecast for 2009, signaling a recovery in demand. In December, Oracle reported a strong second quarter and gave guidance that exceeded expectations. With positive announcements by SAP and Oracle, there is increasing confidence among IT services companies on the pickup in discretionary spending. >>>

Intel Demonstrates Low-Power Smartphone Platform At CES

At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel formally launched 27 new processors produced with the 32 nanometer process technology. It also demonstrated the LG GW990, a smartphone built with the company’s yet-to-be-released Atom Moorestown platform. >>>

Baidu, Alibaba.com, Smiling At Google’s Stance

On January 13, Google announced that it is considering shutting down its Chinese operations if it cannot reach an agreement with the Chinese government over censorship policies; Google wants to run its search engine without filtering results, which it is required to do under Chinese law. Google also said that it has been the target of cyber attacks that it suspects were from China. Google has been steadily losing market share to Baidu, China’s homegrown search engine and the leading Chinese-language search provider, since the former’s entry into China in 2006. According to a recently published report by UBS, together Google and Baidu control 90% of search revenue and 95% of search traffic in China. Baidu is estimated to have 62% of Internet search revenue and 74% of search traffic in China. >>>

RealNetworks Banking On Facebook And iPhone For Growth

Seattle-based RealNetworks, Inc., (NASDAQ:RNWK) provides digital media services and software, including the popular media player RealPlayer, online radio, the music service Rhapsody and RealArcade. The company also offers the Helix Server technologies to mobile service providers and communication companies, software and services that include applications for the iPhone and Facebook, videos and music on-demand, ring tones, and so forth. >>>

Red Hat And NetApp Beat Estimates

The strong results from storage and data management solutions provider NetApp, with annual revenue of $3.4 billion, and Red Hat, the open source giant with annual revenue of $652.6 million, reflect the improving market conditions and the fact that IT spending is easing up. >>>

Dolby Needs A 4K Solution

It is not just the great three-dimensional sound effects in “Avatar” where you will hear the Dolby effect. Dolby today is everywhere, as part of, fittingly enough, its Dolby Everywhere campaign for Web-connected TVs, Blu-ray movie players, PCs, smartphones, set-top boxes, and game consoles. Let’s take a closer look at the company’s performance. >>>

LeapFrog Positions For The Future

The global toy market was around $78.09 billion in 2008. Sixty-five percent of the toy business comes from ten countries, with North America contributing 30% and Europe 29% of global sales. Asia’s contribution was 27% in 2008. The United States is the largest market for toys with sales of $21.7 billion. The toy market is expected to continue to grow as a result of strong demand in the emerging markets like Brazil, China, Russia, and India. Market research firm NPD expects the worldwide toy sales to be approximately $80.3 billion in 2012. The major players in the industry are Mattel, JAKKS Pacific, LeapFrog and Hasbro. >>>