Digital Lifescapes

What happened to the legacy video entertainment market in America, and why has HBO announced that they will -- for the first time -- choose to bypass the traditional pay-TV distribution channel to reach new customers? While residential broadband internet access will soon reach 100 million households in the U.S. market, legacy pay-TV subscription services have already peaked and are in a slow decline. According to the latest market study by The Diffusion Group (TDG), during the next few months, and for the first time in history, the number of home broadband subscriptions will surpass the number of home pay-TV subscriptions. In September 2014, TDG surveyed 500 adult broadband users that did not subscribe to a traditional home pay-TV service -- such as those offered by cable, satellite or telco network operators. Based upon the TDG market assessment, they uncovered that 14 percent of adult broadband users do not use a legacy pay-TV service -- that's up from 9 percent in 2011,

Back in 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store with 200,000 songs offered at 99¢ each and forever changed the music recording industry. Apple has a history of being a disruptor -- they're the ultimate opportunist that knows how to exploit fear, uncertainty and doubt. They find opportunity where the executive leadership of the traditional incumbent players are very weak, indecisive and lack a forward-thinking vision of the future market dynamics. So, is that why they launched Apple Pay , to disrupt the nascent mobile payments industry? Primed and Ready for Exploitation The latest market study by Juniper Research has found that there will be 516 million mobile users of Near Field Communication (NFC ) contactless payment services by the end of 2019, that's up from 101 million this year. Their study findings argue that Apple's introduction of an NFC-based payment mechanism -- now known as Apple Pay -- would stimulate the wider marketplace, helping to address the ke

Given the current level of cloud-related maturity within the enterprise, and the continued shortage of skilled software engineer talent, most CIOs and IT managers must rely upon the professional services of their vendor partners. Meanwhile, many IT service providers will continue to consolidate their cloud computing engineer and architect headcount across regions while seeking to optimize global delivery operations though automation. The latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR) provides clients with insights to how increased adoption of cloud-based services delivery and solutions with embedded analytics has compelled vendors to pursue selective hiring. Savvy cloud service providers have an emphasis on recruiting best-of-breed cybersecurity engineers as well as data scientists and sociologists, which will enable these systems integrators (SIs) to better position their offerings. "Large SI vendors with established global delivery networks are leve

The Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to potentially generate huge new market opportunities for current information technology (IT) or telecom companies and new start-up companies, according to the latest global market study by CompTIA. While IT executives are evenly split on the question of whether IoT is reality or hype, CompTIA asserts that the complex mix of hardware, software and professional services in the IoT ecosystem could create a high probability of upside growth for the industry. "Many IoT elements are rooted in traditional IT components, which is good news for IT companies experienced in building and linking complex systems," said Seth Robinson, senior director, technology analysis, CompTIA . He added, "At the same time, we're likely to see the emergence of many new firms focused on specific aspects of these systems, such as devices and data analysis. The true value of IoT will come from the combination and connectivity of all pieces." It&

The video entertainment sector is still going through a period of transition, as consumer viewing habits shift and evolve. Besides, in the mature markets -- such as North America -- more subscribers are expected to totally abandon pay-TV due to the rising cost of traditional services. Meanwhile, the worldwide pay-TV market is expected to surpass 920 million subscribers by the end of 2014, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. Overall, pay-TV average revenue per user (ARPU) is expected to drop slightly due to increasing price competition, but at a lower rate compared to the ARPU drop in 2013. "The growing number of high-definition (HD) subscribers as well as major sporting events such as the World Cup 2014 have contributed to improving ARPU," said Jake Saunders, VP and practice director of core forecasting at ABI Research . As a result, the total pay-TV service provider market is expected to generate over $269 billion by the end of 2014. Notably, Dire

Mobile service providers will find the next decade to be full of new challenges and opportunities. Meanwhile, the mobile internet phenomena has offered a welcomed increase in service revenue, but there were also some unanticipated negative side effects. Juniper Research claims that voice and messaging traffic lost to Over-the-Top (OTT) mobile internet application providers -- such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Skype -- will cost mobile network operators $14 billion in lost revenues globally this year, that's up by 26 percent since 2013. Their worldwide market study found that in a number of European markets -- including Italy, Spain and the UK -- operator mobile voice revenues had fallen to less than 60 percent of their value five years ago. Juniper analysts argue that a combination of instant messaging (IM), Voice over IP (VoIP) and social media substitution was primarily responsible, resulting not only in lost revenues but in additional costs due to the scale of signalling traf

The ongoing shift to next-generation data center architectures continues to impact the legacy vendor community. The advent of cloud and mobile computing -- as well as exponential growth in data variety and velocity -- is upending the traditional data center innovation model. This shift drove average gross margin down 60 basis points year-to-year to 41.9 percent in the second quarter of 2014 for server, storage and networking original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) tracked by Technology Business Research (TBR). "OEMs willing to share intellectual property -- and profits -- with ecosystem partners are setting themselves up to reap the benefits of tapping niche innovation, driving partner loyalty and remaining in-tune with customer's evolving application requirements, all while reducing up-front investment risk," said Krista Macomber, data center analyst at TBR . These benefits will include more stable bottom-line hardware performance, as well as higher-margin, higher-

Small consumer electronics, such as smart wearable devices, create new challenges for user interface (UI) designers that must find innovative ways to enable human interaction via emerging technologies. As a result, semiconductor component integration and software development will also evolve. The dominance of touchscreen user interfaces will reduce over the next 5 years as more sensors are introduced to mainstream products and entirely new product form-factors emerge, enabling and necessitating new user interfaces -- such as voice, gesture, eye-tracking, and neural. The latest ABI Research market study examined popular UI methods as well as the natural sensory technologies transitioning from research labs into future consumer electronics product solutions. "Touch got mobile device usability to where it is today, but touch will become one of many interfaces for future devices as well as for new and future markets," said Jeff Orr, Senior Practice Director at ABI Research

The introduction of open source software platforms and bare-metal systems into the legacy enterprise network realm will eventually disrupt the status-quo for leading vendors that have previously benefited from the lack of unruly innovation. Meanwhile, established vendors can still take advantage of the apparent resistance to change within many traditional IT organizations that depend upon the conservative leadership of cautious CIOs. Results from the latest market study by Technology Business Research (TBR) indicate growth in the enterprise networking market is accelerating, as demand for cloud, mobility and security solutions -- particularly in developed markets -- escalated and major suppliers leveraged their dominant market positions to capture customer spending. Total enterprise networking revenue among the benchmarked companies grew 4.3 percent year-to-year in the first half of 2014, that's more than the 0.9 percent growth in second half of 2013. Vendors capitalized on

As we approach the end of 2014, it's important to revisit the enterprise mobility application marketplace. Clearly, the mobile cloud apps trend will be far reaching in 2015 -- it will touch every department within many organizations and it will be adopted by most forward-thinking industries. The upside for further market development and growth is already significant. 451 Research expects the Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) market to grow from $3.8 billion in revenue in 2014 to $9.6 billion in 2018. EMM, defined as a set of tools that include mobile device management, mobile application management, mobile email container applications, mobile application platforms, mobile back-end as a service (MBaaS) and mobile virtualization, can be used solo, in parallel or in a tiered fashion across a mobile environment. 451 Research sees these as important tool-sets adopted by the enterprise, and as critical enablers of future mobile computing. As enterprises increasingly adopt EMM, t

The Global Networked Economy is entering the next phase of its ongoing evolution. Emerging phenomena, such as the Industrial Internet, will help to launch progressive applications that will require new market development leadership. The outlook for these upside opportunities are boundless. Imagine a highway where cars are able to safely navigate to their destinations without a driver. Imagine a home where an elderly patient’s health is closely monitored by her hospital physician. Imagine a city that significantly reduces waste through sensor-embedded water pipes, buildings, parking meters and more. These are no longer scenarios from a distant future -- they're happening today. Nearly 12 billion internet-connected devices will be in use worldwide by the end of 2014, according to the latest global market study by Strategy Analytics. That is equivalent to 1.7 devices for every person on the planet -- a ratio which will rise to 4.3 by 2020, when 33 billion devices will be in us

This year has been a pivotal period for many public cloud service providers. They've fully tapped the early-adopter segment of the market. The leading providers have also overcome much of the early inertia and resistance from legacy CIOs within the multinational enterprise marketplace. The Shadow IT phenomena will continue to transform how Line-of-Business (LOB) users make purchase decisions. The path forward is clear for the savvy CEOs that choose to fund this growing trend. Eventually, even the most reluctant traditional IT leaders will embrace a hybrid cloud model, to actively participate in this business technology transformation. The public cloud services market will nearly double over the next four years from $67 billion in 2014 to $113 billion by 2018, according to the latest global market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). The TBR "Public Cloud Benchmark" identifies revenue and growth leaders across SaaS, PaaS and IaaS -- highlighting their strate

When a buyer visits a company's website, will their visit result in a good user experience -- regardless of the device they're using at the time? More often than not, that experience is within a smaller screen on a mobile device -- such as a smartphone or media tablet. Savvy marketers are already starting to influence the adoption of mobile-first design strategies for their online properties.  Making it easier to buy something via a mobile device is a forward-thinking competitive advantage, because this activity will become more mainstream over time. eBusiness teams are working on rebuilding their legacy desktop site experiences to be responsive across all web-enabled touch-points, but it's a huge undertaking and few organizations have the budget or risk appetite to redesign all of their web assets in one fell swoop. Many teams start with the easy places on their website -- such as the home page, the category pages, the campaign landing pages -- after all, these pages

A Smart Watch can be defined as a smart wearable accessory that can be worn on a user's wrist, offering a range of smart functionality in conjunction with an external platform -- such as the smartphone or media tablet. The smart capabilities can range from displaying phone call, text and email alerts to accessing stock and weather information or any fitness, sports or commerce applications -- such as heart rate monitoring, payments or ticketing. Juniper Research has forecast that more than 100 million smart watches will be in use worldwide by 2019, with a host of premium brand launches over the next 12-18 months bringing the category into mainstream consumer consciousness. According to the findings from the latest Juniper market study, differentiation is now shifting from hardware towards other features that allow new capabilities, such as GPS and NFC connectivity. It argues that the functionality is likely to become standard in the next few years, particularly as Apple ha

Once PC vendors let go of their great (unfounded) hope that high-cost Ultrabooks would deliver a huge windfall in sales, then they were able to focus more on the real demand for low-cost notebook PCs and Chromebooks in the marketplace. Worldwide PC shipments totaled 78.5 million units in the third quarter of 2014 (3Q14) -- that's a year-on-year decline of -1.7 percent and a sizable improvement over the forecast of -4.1 percent, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Many of the trends from the second quarter remained relevant and contributed to the 3Q14 results. Commercial PC purchases played a key role in many markets, with the top three vendors -- Lenovo, HP, and Dell -- all showing solid year-on-year growth. Conversely, fierce competition and a spiral toward tablet-like prices helped to further consolidate the market. Shipments of entry systems, including Chromebooks, continued to inject an important source of volume and sustained imp

comScore released data reporting key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry for August 2014. Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 42 percent OEM market share, while Google Android led as the number one smartphone platform with 52 percent platform market share. Once again, Facebook ranked as the top individual smartphone app. But the more important trend in America is that Google has achieved what no other company can claim -- a powerful mobile media cross-platform presence that extends their reach to just about every smartphone in the market. According to the comScore assessment, four of the top five mobile apps in the U.S. market are from Google. Why is this important? In a saturated market, such as the American mobile phone marketplace, the big market opportunities are no longer in near-term smartphone device revenue attainment. It's now more about the longer-term software app market development potential. And, increasingly, it's about the digital media

The digital health industry, as a concept, can be seen as the intersection of several industries -- the healthcare industry itself, the consumer electronics industry, the mobile industry and the broader IT industry, required for the establishment of EHRs (Electronic Health Records), for example. Though the healthcare sector has been in existence for hundreds of years, it is often accused of being very slow to adapt to the apparent market needs and technology advances outside of the medical profession. However forces acting upon it now, such as the increase in the proportion of the population who are of retirement age, are prompting a rethink as to how healthcare should be addressed. Many initiatives and concepts, such as accountable care, will need a modern digitized infrastructure to succeed. Healthcare focused smartphone interfaces launched by Samsung and Apple will be instrumental in propelling the global healthcare accessory hardware market to $3 billion by 2019, according to

ABI Research forecasts that the installed base of mobile devices -- smartphones, smart wearables, media tablets, and notebook PCs -- will reach 8 billion by 2019, providing a huge installed base for rechargeable batteries and charging solutions. Mobile device hardware, software, and usage have developed at an incredible rate in recent years, from network speeds, to screen resolution and size, to processing power. End user’s reliance on their smartphones also grows and grows, with mobile data usage experiencing exponential growth. One crucial part of the overall solution, battery life and charging technology, has been a laggard to date. Leaders in the mobile device sector now believe that this poor performance is unacceptable. Short battery life remains the biggest irritation to smartphone users and is a clear opportunity for handset vendors and mobile network service providers to improve the user experience by adopting new, longer-lasting battery technologies. "Additionall

Worldwide ownership of Connected TV Devices -- including smart TVs, smart blu-ray players, IP-enabled game consoles and digital media streamers -- grew 7 percent quarter-on-quarter in Q2 2014 and 34 percent versus the same period in 2013 to reach 500 million units. The growing demand for devices that facilitate the streaming of online video to the large screen TV is creating a highly competitive environment with no fewer than 16 major technology brands accounting for 90 percent of devices in use, according to the latest global market study by Strategy Analytics. Connected TV Devices fulfill a growing consumer desire to access over-the-top (OTT) video content on the big screen within the home. While Game Console vendors and the major TV brands have the largest footprint of such devices, other companies -- such as Apple, Google and Amazon -- are starting to build up a significant base of lower cost media streaming boxes and dongles from which they can tap into the online TV audienc

Apple and Samsung have led the market substantially since the inception of media tablets. However, the race for third place is still undecided and competition is heating up between Lenovo, Amazon, ASUS, and other emerging vendors. The aggressive nature of the media tablet market and substantial increase in emerging vendors has created a stall for leaders in the market giving PC OEMs the opportunity to close the gap between leaders and followers. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, emerging vendors are forecast to experience a CAGR of 22.8 percent between 2014 and 2019. With third place up for grabs, Lenovo is working to gain ground in the market, and in 2019 is expected to ship 21 million tablets, attaining 7.3 percent of the overall market. This forecast momentum and growth would land Lenovo solidly in third place. During 2013, the tablet market exploded with new devices that overwhelmed consumers with a multitude of choices. Leading tablet vendors quickly do

Wearable devices have exploded into the consumer electronics scene during the last two years. As the use-cases become established, they will become pervasive -- moving beyond the early-adopter stage of market development. The upside potential varies considerably, depending on the market segment and purpose of the wearable device. From a conceptual vista of broad electronic possibilities, the current reality of wearables is one of increasingly niche devices. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research , global smart wearable device shipments will more than quadruple by 2017, reaching 116 million units, compared to an estimated 27 million in 2014. This still suggests that less than 5 percent of smartphones will be used with such wearables by this time. Findings from the extensive Juniper study asserts that with technological barriers coming down, larger vendors in the market are moving beyond devices to produce software operating systems and data-banks to manage the

One of the most interesting applications for embedded M2M technologies is with commercial vehicle fleets. Fleet Management is about improving commercial fleet vehicle operations. New mobile technology applications are an example of practical uses for concepts that are known as the Internet of Things. Intelligent fleet management solutions based on proven wireless technologies -- such as GPS-based telematics -- are helping fleet operators to enhance their efficiency in terms of improving vehicle performance and fuel mileage, enhancing reliability or safety, scheduled maintenance planning and optimizing delivery routes. The growing competitiveness among the transportation service providers, CO2 emission control norms, and rising fuel prices are making Fleet Management Systems an essential component for the business operation of the fleet vehicle operators. The overall Fleet Management market is expected to grow from $10.91 billion in 2013 to $30.45 billion by 2018 -- that's at a

The Internet is a collection of interconnected networks. It was designed to enable a computer or device connected to one of these networks to access information and services from any computer or device connected to any of the other networks. While the Internet is often abstracted as a cloud -- and may seem somewhat virtual or intangible to its users -- it relies on networks, facilities, and equipment including billions of discrete devices connected by millions of miles of telecommunication cabling, plus a vast array of other equipment. Investment in these networks, facilities, and equipment is incurred by a wide range of market participants -- Internet Backbone Providers, Internet Access Providers, Content and Application Providers, and a range of specialized service providers all invest in the networks that have come together as the Public Internet. According to the latest market study by Analysys Mason, Internet content and application providers invest over $30 billion per annu