Digital Lifescapes

Across the globe, mobile data traffic continues to grow at an unprecedented pace, driven primarily by online video usage. The increased number of mobile subscriptions, new smartphone users and the multitude of available software apps have resulted in an explosion in data usage. Worldwide mobile data traffic, generated by all smartphones, feature phones and media tablets, will approach almost 197,000 PB (Petabytes) by 2019 -- that's the equivalent to over 10 billion Blu-ray movies, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. However, their research found that only 41 percent of the data generated by these devices will be carried over conventional cellular wireless networks by 2019, with the majority of mobile data traffic offloaded to Wi-Fi networks. The latest Juniper market analyst estimates that the average monthly data usage by smartphone and tablet users will double over the next four years. The daily digital media consumption by mobile users will continue

Worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to grow by 11.3 percent in 2015, which is down from 27.6 percent in 2014, according to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). While overall smartphone growth will continue to slow as mature markets reach saturation, some markets will experience robust growth in 2015 and beyond. As a result, worldwide shipment volumes are forecast to reach 1.9 billion units annually by 2019. IDC now expects 2015 to bring two notable milestones. First, they predict that this will be the first year in which China's smartphone growth, forecast to be 2.5 percent in 2015, will be slower than the overall worldwide market. Second, Google Android smartphone growth is also expected to be slower than the worldwide market -- now forecast at 8.5 percent in 2015. IDC believes both trends will persist throughout the forecast period, which now goes out to 2019. "Smartphone volume still has a lot of opportunity in the years t

The global managed security services (MSS) market will grow rapidly with the ongoing move towards cloud computing, the adoption of bring-your-own-device (BYOD), and as new cyber security laws require IT organizations to improve their security posture. Sophisticated threats, such as targeted attacks, advanced persistent attacks, and larger distributed denial of service attacks are pushing enterprises to adopt a more mature approach to IT  security , thereby increasing the market opportunity for MSS providers. According to the latest worldwide market study by Frost & Sullivan, the MSS market earned revenues of $7.83 billion in 2014 and is forecast to reach $12.78 billion in 2018. The market in  Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will remain the largest. Moreover, security asset management and monitoring (SAMM) services will represent the prime market segment. The adoption of cloud-based SAMM will gather pace as the need for real-time security intelligence and protection, b

Home automation is reaching an inflection point. Service providers -- including telcos and cable operators -- are introducing a range of offerings to this market. The intersection of home automation services with wearables, Internet of Things (IoT) sensor technologies, big data analytics, and health management services creates new opportunity. A growing roster of smart home services and device providers are using home security monitoring as a beachhead to introduce home automation services, according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research. In the key U.S. market, considered by industry analysts to be a bellwether for developed markets around the world, around 15 million more U.S. homes will invest in new connected home security services in the next 5 years. "After decades where penetration into U.S. households stalled, home security adoption is set for significant growth," said Jonathan Collins, principal analyst at ABI Research . However, it will not b

The growing popularity of watching online entertainment has meant that viewing video via the public internet has become a much more widespread activity in many people's lives, particularly the younger demographic that demonstrates little interest in the traditional pay-TV experience. Worldwide subscribers to all over-the-top (OTT) video entertainment services -- such as Netflix and Amazon Prime -- will increase from 92.1 million in 2014 to 332.2 million by 2019, according the the latest market study by Juniper Research . Continued growth within the North American market will see it remain as the leading region, in terms of total subscribers, but closely followed by the Far East, as this region emerges with new services and rapidly growing consumer interest. In its latest global market assessment, Juniper found that consumers will still favor Connected TVs as their primary screen -- especially for watching long-form video delivered via OTT subscription services. Their resear

Digital video entertainment continues to gain momentum around the globe, as more consumers embrace high-definition broadcast television services -- many will also choose to connect their TV sets to the internet and subscribe to over-the-top video streaming offerings. Based on forecasts for 138 countries, the number of digital TV homes will increase by more than 1 billion between 2010 and 2020 to reach 1.65 billion -- that's up by 180 percent, according to the latest worldwide market study by Digital TV Research . The total digital television households will climb by 134 million during 2015. According to their assessment, global digital TV penetration will reach 97.6 percent of television households by the end of 2020 -- that's up from 40.5 percent at the end of 2010 and 67.2 percent at the end of 2014. By 2020, 93 countries will be completely digital, compared with only 17 at end-2014. It's now forecast that about 124 countries will have more than 90 percent digital

The CIO at a typical large enterprise has a difficult task today. They're expected to perform procurement due diligence, in a professional and comprehensive manner, before selecting a cloud computing service(s) for their organization's many workload requirements. More often than not, they look to one of the leading IT industry analysts for guidance. From a CIOs perspective, the industry analysts that they subscribe to (i.e. pay them an annual fee for their analysis) are expected to provide market clarity and a candid assessment of the various players. Honest and informed analyst guidance is particularly important when most of the primary vendors and service providers tend to deliver the same basic offerings, or make very similar claims about their company's cloud-related capabilities. Moreover, viewed through the lens of the collective IT technology trade media, a CIO can be excused for thinking that the current cloud infrastructure marketplace appears to be an undif

While it has been a common practice for telecom industry analysts to assess the economic vitality of a nation by ranking their relative investment in fiber optic broadband communication infrastructure, in future the comparison of wireless broadband capabilities will be the key measure of supremacy. By the end of 2014, China had gained almost 100 million 4G LTE mobile service subscriptions in the first year of full commercialization -- further demonstrating the nation's unprecedented growth momentum, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. Harnessing their first-mover advantage, China Mobile seized almost 90 percent share of the total 4G LTE market in China. Their accelerated investment in telecom infrastructure is a testament to the emerging Chinese leadership within the Global Networked Economy. "Since the other two China mobile operators -- China Unicom and China Telecom -- were granted preferred FDD-LTE licenses in March 2015, it is expected that China w

As more business communication infrastructure moves online, it eventually becomes the target of someone that will attempt to negatively impact that enterprise. Computer crime is a growing threat to corporations and individuals who are increasingly dependent upon the Global Networked Economy. Mobile devices with internet access amplifies that commercial dependency, and the greater potential for harm. The growth of at-risk online commercial database access via the public internet will increase the cost of data breaches to $2.1 trillion globally by 2019 -- that's almost four times the estimated cost of these IT security breaches in 2015, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. That being said, their latest findings indicate that the majority of these new security breaches will likely come from criminal access to existing IT data centers and associated network infrastructure. While new threats targeting mobile devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) are being

As more machine-to-machine (M2M) applications are being created, Internet connectivity will become essential to numerous heavy industries around the globe. The installed base of wireless Internet of Things (IoT) devices in industrial automation reached 10.3 million in 2014, according to the latest worldwide market study by Berg Insight. The number of wireless IoT devices in automation networks is now forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.2 percent to reach 43.5 million by 2020. There is a wide range of wireless technologies used in industrial automation with different characteristics and use cases. As an example, 802.15.4 based standards such as WirelessHART and ISA100.11a are major contenders at the field level in process automation networks. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are the most widespread technologies in factory automation while cellular connectivity typically is used for remote monitoring and backhaul communication between plants. The increasing populari

Retailers are investing more on in-store digital technology that has the potential to improve the shopping experience. The ABI Research quarterly indoor location database has forecast well over one million indoor location retail deployments by 2020, with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons now established as the key building block for indoor location. "What is really interesting is how rapidly beacons are spreading into all 11 retail or venue verticals covered in the database, in particular quick service restaurants (CAGR 84.4 percent) and convenience stores (CAGR 47.1 percent) are two of the fastest growing verticals over the forecast period" said Patrick Connolly, principal analyst at ABI Research . ABI has forecast some major chain-wide technology deployments over the next 12 months, and there will also be significant new growth in key retail verticals -- such as Grocery, Big Box, and Malls. Total BLE beacon shipments are now expected to approach 200 million by 2020 a

Current mergers and acquisitions related to the Internet of Things (IoT) continue to break records, according to the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research. Moreover, the applications for machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies are already surfacing in numerous industries. Buyers so far this year have spent $14.8 billion to purchase 39 IoT-related companies, surpassing the $14.3 billion spent for 62 such companies in all of 2014, which itself was a record-breaking year. Semiconductor-related acquisitions have driven the bulk of spending so far in 2015 with ARM, Intel and NXP each announcing two or more deals largely driven by IoT-related position taking. The largest deal of the period, the NXP $11.8 billion acquisition of Freescale Semiconductor, was positioned as a consolidation of leaders that will focus its scale and reach on key IoT growth markets led by connected cars. Other acquirers announcing acquisitions in 2015 included Amazon, ARM, Brocade, PTC, Silver Spring Ne

The mobile digital marketing channel continues to gain momentum across the globe. The annual worldwide advertising spend on mobile devices is now forecast to reach $105 billion by 2019 -- that's up from an estimated $51 billion this year. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research , this increase in advertising spend is in large part attributable to an attitude shift among major brands and national retailers who are now embracing mobile as a core channel for consumer engagement. Juniper argues that the ability of smartphones to deliver targeted, personalized and timely advertising -- aligned with the media-stacking trends among savvy consumers -- means that mobile advertising offers both high visibility and relatively higher response rates for the big brands. Regional Growth and Other Key Factors The research findings also observes an uplift in advertising spend within the Far East region, fueled by the dramatic adoption of mCommerce retail activity within

Now the smartphone market has reached saturation in America, with low single-digit growth rates, more market research emphasis will be focused on software applications. Offering guidance, comScore released data about the key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry for March 2015. Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 42.6 percent OEM market share, while Google Android led as the number one smartphone platform with 52.4 percent platform market share. Once again, Facebook ranked supreme as the top individual smartphone app, by a wide margin. Meanwhile, Google has the most combined number of apps on smartphones in this market. Smartphone OEM Market Share 187.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (77 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in March -- that's up 3 percent since December. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 42.6 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up by 1 percentage point from December). Samsung ranked second

The commercial applications for social networking and social media platforms in the enterprise has experienced mixed results. Part of the challenge stems from the use of the term Social Business to describe this phenomena -- since many executives still question the value of Social technologies. That being said, there are encouraging signs that the market for these offerings is maturing, as software vendors expand the definition to incorporate more familiar business-oriented solutions. The Social Business Applications Market is expected to grow from $13.9 billion in revenue in 2014 to $37 billion in 2019, according the the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research. The specific market segments included in the analysis are Marketing Automation, Social Media Monitoring & Management, Enterprise Collaboration, and Web Experience Management. As end-users and enterprises continue to embrace the Social Business movement, 451 Research believes this will lead to a healthy market

Across the digital content arena, there has been a gradual transition from the pay-per-download model to a month-to-month or annual subscription. This transition is very apparent in the mobile space, where the majority of applications are now free at the point of download. The overall value of the global digital content market will reach $154 billion annually by 2019 -- that's an increase of nearly 60 percent on 2014, according to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research. Their new research findings observed that mobile and online games would account for the largest share of content sales -- 38 percent of cumulative revenues -- with game formats continuing to transition from physical to digital. According to Juniper's assessment, the success of platforms such as Valve's Steam -- which now has over 125 million active accounts worldwide -- is a key driver in this evolution. Meanwhile, revenues from game consoles and handheld devices are diminishing as pla

Around the globe, demand for access to the mobile internet has positively remained consistent throughout last year. Following a typical year-to-year upward trajectory, the global smartphone and phablet market began 2015 with a boost, compared to the same quarter in 2014. Vendors shipped a total of 336.5 million smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of 2015 (1Q15), that's up by 16.7 percent from the 288.5 million units in 1Q14. In the overall mobile phone market (smartphones plus feature phones), vendors shipped 458.9 million units worldwide, down a mere -0.1% from the 459.3 million units shipped in 1Q14, according to the worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). "The challenge made by Apple for the top spot in the fourth quarter returned to a clear lead for Samsung in the first quarter -- despite the soaring global demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus," said Anthony Scarsella, research manager at IDC . Apple's strong follow-up quarter

Some CIOs and IT managers will point to complexity within the solution evaluation process to excuse their delay in adopting cloud-based offerings. In response, 451 Research has introduced its latest Cloud Price Index (CPI), detailing an objective investigation of the complete cost of cloud computing . The Index is intended to enable enterprise buyers to have transparency into the pricing models of both public and private clouds, analysis of the total cost of ownership (TCO), and insight into what 451 Research calls the "golden ratios" that determine when private or public cloud options deliver superior value. "The CPI is a tool that will benefit buyers weighing the most appropriate venues to run applications and workloads or to source services and providers determining pricing strategies," said William Fellows, vice president at 451 Research . The "Cloud Price Index: Private Edition" reveals that equivalent solutions from commercial software vendors

The competition to become the third mobile device Operating System (OS), behind Google and Apple, has evolved. Introduction of the  Internet of Things (IoT) has shifted the focus. Now, savvy OS vendors need to be concerned with supporting wearables, smart cars, and smart home devices. "For both new and incumbent OS vendors, capturing the next wave of users will require support of new device types, a strong focus on developing markets, and support for universal development processes," said Eric Abbruzzese, research analyst at ABI Research . As Google expands Android Wear, and Apple launches its Apple Watch, other OS vendors must capitalize on not only wearables, but all smart device categories requiring an OS that supports apps. This emerging market is a tremendous upside opportunity for open-source solutions. Why the Developer Community Matters The Apple Watch is getting the news headlines, but it serves as an example of the current limitations of smart watches and t

Only the most conservative laggard marketers have yet to embrace digital trends. Global brand and retail spend on digital marketing activities will reach nearly $200 billion in 2015, that's up by 15 percent on 2014 levels, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. The study observed that nearly 70 percent of the net increase on digital marketing spend this year would be concentrated on the mobile channel, as legacy brand strategies evolve to deliver campaigns within an omni-channel digital environment. According to the research, factors behind the migration to smartphones and media tablets include their inherent capabilities to enable timely, targeted and personalized marketing campaigns. That being said, retailer marketers will still need to seek ways to enhance customer engagement and to analyze the relative success of their efforts. In the case of mobile coupons, redemption rates were typically significantly higher and costs per redemption much lower than

Augmented Reality (AR) is defined as a technology that identifies and tracks data from the physical world, in combination with data drawn from digital sources, to present the user with a view of the physical world overlaid with relevant computer-generated information. Or, put another way, AR applications tend to be limited by the developers own imagination. Creative designers will find new ways to apply this unique capability. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, augmented reality technology used in the enterprise and industrial markets will drive annual software application revenues of $2.4 billion in 2019, that's up from $247 million in 2014. This translates to a tenfold increase over the forecast period. Juniper notes that enterprise interest in AR has reached new heights, due to improvements in software, wearable technology and the promise of significant efficiency gains. However, the varied individual needs of enterprises dictate that AR app costs wi