Will Street follow boxoffice pattern? -- As the wave of quarterly earnings reports from big media and entertainment companies is set to start in earnest with Sony Corp.'s latest figures, Wall Street observers are hoping for new insight into how the much-discussed advertising, boxoffice and DVD sales trends are affecting the financial performance of sector giants. Amid much recent gloom and doom talk, as well as weak first-half stock trading momentum, however, many wonder if anything can turn investors more bullish on the sector over the near-term. According to analysts, second-quarter earnings figures from such media giants as Time Warner and Viacom Inc. are unlikely to inspire much enthusiasm, while the Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. should provide some of the strongest quarterly reports.
The global cloud computing market is undergoing new significant growth, driven by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and the demand for flexible, scalable infrastructure. The recent market study by International Data Corporation (IDC) provides compelling evidence of this transformation, highlighting the accelerating growth in cloud infrastructure spending and the pivotal role of AI in shaping the industry's future trajectory. Shared Infrastructure Market Development The study reveals a 36.9 percent year-over-year worldwide increase in spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments in the first quarter of 2024, reaching $33 billion. This growth substantially outpaced non-cloud infrastructure spending, which saw a modest 5.7 percent increase to $13.9 billion during the same period. The surge in cloud infrastructure spending was partially fueled by an 11.4 percent growth in unit demand, influenced by higher average selling prices, primari