Digital Lifescapes

Across the globe, government regulators are eager to contain the influence of Big Tech for a number of reasons that pose a significant threat to democracy and the security of a civil society. These include concerns about the companies' market power, their ability to stifle competition, their impact on privacy and data protection, and their role in spreading misinformation.  Regulators are also concerned about the power that Big Tech companies have over their citizens' lives, as they control the information we see and the way we interact with the online economy. Big Tech Global Market Development Over the next few years, regulators will crackdown on some of the world’s biggest tech companies -- including Amazon, Google, Meta, X (Twitter), Alibaba, and Tencent -- according to the latest worldwide market study by GlobalData. The insightful GlobalData survey findings predict that regulators will pursue the most influential Big Tech companies in 12 key regulatory arenas. Those inclu...

The leading organizations that create a digital transformation plan will gain the most from their use of public cloud computing. However, some CIO and CTO leaders still struggle with how to build a modern cloud migration strategy. The worldwide cloud computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market grew 41.4 percent in 2021, to a total of $90.9 billion -- that's up from $64.3 billion in 2020, according to the latest market study by Gartner. "The IaaS market continues to grow unabated as cloud-native becomes the primary architecture for modern workloads," said Sid Nag, vice president and analyst at Gartner . Cloud IaaS Market Development Cloud supports the scalability and composability that advanced technologies and applications require, while also enabling enterprise leaders to address emerging needs such as sovereignty, data integration, and enhanced customer experience. In 2021, the top five IaaS providers accounted for over 80 percent of the market. Amazon AWS conti...

The ongoing commitment to spend more on advertising is primarily driven by legacy marketers. The majority of CMOs in these organizations have difficulty embracing progressive methods of market development, such as digital content marketing. They continue to explore new media but stay within their comfort zone. As traditional advertisers witnessed the growth in smartphone use, they've shifted their digital ad spend -- such as display and search advertising -- to focus more on mobile devices. Most types of online advertising growth are now due to mobile internet use, which will overtake online desktop use. Digital Advertising Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, the total spend on digital advertising is forecast to reach $520 billion by 2023 -- that's rising from $294 billion in 2019. That's a CAGR of 15 percent over the next 5 years; driven by the adoption of AI-based programmatic advertising to deliver highly targete...

Digital TV and online video has seen the battle between Over the Top (OTT) providers and traditional television networks pushed to the forefront. In order to differentiate themselves, and reduce the need to rely on expensive content partnerships, OTTs will produce more of their own entertainment content. According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) services -- from leading providers such as Netflix and Amazon -- will drive a surge in OTT revenues to reach $120 billion in 2022, and that's up from $64 billion in 2017. In this environment, the traditional expensive bundle of pay-TV services will surely continue their decline. Original Content Market Development The upside market opportunity for the innovative low-cost video entertainment providers is significant. The in-depth market research also uncovered that over a quarter of global households will eventually subscribe to SVOD services by 2022. The new research foun...

Cloud computing services continue to grow, as more organizations discover the benefits of hybrid cloud solutions. The worldwide cloud infrastructure services market grew significantly in the first quarter of 2017, up by 42 percent year-on-year to reach $11.4 billion, according to the latest market study by Canalys. Once again, Amazon AWS maintained its dominance in the sector, holding a stable global market share of 31 percent. It was followed by its strongest hyperscale rivals - Microsoft, Google and IBM. Microsoft grew 93 percent and Google was up 74 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. These growth rates were faster than those of AWS and IBM, which grew 43 percent and 38 percent respectively. Public Cloud Service Market Development "Competition for enterprise customers is intensifying among leading cloud service providers, which are investing heavily to secure key national and global accounts," said Daniel Liu, research analyst at Canalys . Timing is ...

Consumer demand for cloud-based services drive investment in data centers. Across the globe, the largest consumer cloud service providers continue to add more and more capabilities to expand their offerings, thereby making it very difficult for the remaining me-too providers to compete with them. Moreover, the traditional information and communication technology (ICT) vendors often don't benefit from this ongoing infrastructure expansion, because the cloud providers prefer to invest in open technologies from low-cost 'white label' ODM commodity vendors. That's unlikely to change. Hyperscale Cloud Market Development The hyperscale or webscale cloud service providers -- including the seven largest (Super7) Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent -- believe they are best positioned to provide access to a variety of cloud services in a scalable and cost-effective way, and view their public cloud businesses as critical to their growth over the...

Key findings from a new video entertainment survey outline the increasing popularity of original content, and a growing trend of paying for multiple video services. According to the latest 451 Research market study, 19 percent of streaming video subscribers are paying for three or more services -- that's up 4 points over the previous year. These streaming enthusiasts are creating their own bundles of video services, starting with Netflix (95 percent) and Amazon Video (82 percent) then adding a combination of subscription and a-la-carte platforms such as Hulu, HBO Now and iTunes. Netflix and Amazon Lead the Market Among all survey respondents who pay for a streaming service, 79 percent say they subscribe to Netflix and 53 percent to Amazon Video. That said, Amazon Video continues to be the growth story, up 5 points over the past year. Access to movies (50 percent) is the top reason why consumers pay for streaming video services; viewing complete seasons of TV shows (45 perce...

Some traditional pay-TV service providers have already supported their customer's expectations for better apps on smart TVs, which enable service subscribers to overcome the limitations of their provider's set-top box and limited on-demand video programs. Moreover, the leading online video subscription services -- such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu -- enable millions of American smart TV owners to independently access video entertainment (without traditional pay-TV). Internet-Connected TV Market Development According to new research from The Diffusion Group (TDG), the penetration of Internet-connected TVs among U.S. broadband households has increased nearly 50 percent since 2013 -- from 50 percent market penetration to 74 percent at the end of 2016. Connected-TV market penetration grew by 22 percent between 2013 and 2014, and another 15 percent between 2014 and 2015. However, new growth has slowed to only 4 percent, indicating that the market has matured, which is...

Ever since the mainstream adoption of the mobile smartphone, the word 'smart' is used broadly to define any device that has some form of on-board communication connectivity. Likewise, a Smart Home is designed to deliver a number of digital services inside and outside the home, through a range of networked devices. Juniper Research believes the entertainment segment to be the most viable in terms of consumer uptake, for the simple reason that these services are almost universally desired. Revenues from smart home hardware and services will reach $83 billion this year, rising to $195 billion by 2021, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. This revenue upside will be generated through entertainment, automation, healthcare and connected devices. Smart Home Market Development The new research also found that home automation and smart appliances will be the two fastest growing segments over the next 5 years, driven by established manufacturers such as Sa...

Blame Netflix, but they're not alone. Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) services continue to disrupt the traditional video entertainment sector in major markets worldwide. In addition, North America has been a proving ground for innovative new offerings. According to the findings from a recent study, North America will have 112 million SVOD subscribers -- that's for movie and TV services only; excluding sports -- by end-2016, which is up by 19 million when compared with 2015. Moreover, the SVOD total is forecast to climb to 138 million by 2021. However, the North America study by Digital TV Research anticipates 117 million TV households in the market by 2021, so the SVOD total will represent 104 percent of all TV households in the region. SVOD Market Development Trends "It is important to stress that these SVOD figures are gross – some homes take more than one SVOD platform, especially in the U.S. market," said Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV R...

Video entertainment demand has been evolving rapidly. Yet traditional pay-TV service providers are still challenged to address the needs of more progressive consumers. Case in point: subscriber awareness of their "TV Everywhere" offerings -- the ability to watch programming from their pay-TV provider on devices other than a TV -- remains low at 36 percent, which is unchanged since 2013. Meanwhile, pay-TV marketers are attempting to capitalize on another growing trend. Skinny bundles, TV subscription packages composed of selected channels targeting specific customer segments, have the potential to attract elusive younger consumers to pay-TV, according to the latest market study by Altman Vilandrie & Company. However, their survey also finds that two-thirds of older consumers, typically the most loyal subscribers of legacy pay-TV, say they are wasting money for channels they don’t use -- so, skinny bundles could cannibalize the service provider's existing subscriber...

Some consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers have learned from mistakes of the past. Maybe it was the flashing '12:00' on VCR clocks, or the TV remote controls with 40 near-identical tiny buttons, designers knew we needed better ways to program and control the everyday devices that we use. Now, on a growing number of CE devices, we can simply use our voice to perform routine tasks. While Apple Siri and Google Now are well-established smartphone features, it's in the emerging smart home that voice control systems will discover their full potential. Smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart plugs, and many more devices will extend the reach and simplicity of managing the smart home environment using our voice. CE Voice Control Market Development With ABI Research forecasting more than 120 million voice-enabled devices to ship annually by 2021, voice control -- which combines speech recognition and natural language processing -- is becoming the key user interface within th...

Streaming video entertainment services, such as those available from Netflix and Amazon, have already had a significant impact on the pay-TV sector in North America. As a result, European pay-TV operators that witnessed this disruption are eager to consider options that would enable them to transform their business. Amazon Video has announced it will be launching its Amazon Streaming Partners Program (ASPP) in Europe. Amazon operates a platform business model for video; it provides flexible video entertainment services to consumers and content rights holders, plus it's already present in every part of the value chain. Amazon is becoming a credible and more direct competitor to pay-TV service providers, despite not competing with core live content, according to the findings from the latest market study by Analysys Mason. Pay-TV Market Development in Europe This platform business model allows video content owners to offer their own subscriptions through Amazon Video, instead ...

Recorded music is the most mature segment of mobile entertainment. Given the current spread across competing platforms, it's clear that online digital distribution is now the core of that industry. And, when offered a choice, fewer people will opt to own copies of music recordings. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, revenue generated through advertising-based online music streaming is now forecast to exceed $1 Billion by 2017 -- that's up from $782 Million in 2015. However, the key music industry leaders are now attempting to slow this transition and exclude full-featured freemium services, with current offerings instead being restricted to basic 'radio' style features. Regardless, ad-based revenues are still expected to see strong growth as more people migrate to music streaming services, including some evolving offerings such as Google Play Music. The Juniper study found that while ad-based freemium services will continue to entice a ...

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...

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...

As more over-the-top (OTT) video is consumed by Americans in their homes, this trend has created a positive upside for certain types of consumer electronics -- in particular, streaming media players. Moreover, low-cost on-demand access to video entertainment has disrupted the legacy pay-TV industry. By the first quarter of 2017, 40 percent of U.S. Internet homes will have a streaming media player, bringing the total number of homes with these devices to 39 million, according to the latest market study by NPD Group. At the beginning of 2014 (Q1) only 16 percent of U.S. Internet homes had a streaming media player. Ownership is on track to climb to nearly one-quarter of homes, 24 percent, by Q1 2015 when consumers report device ownership that takes into account their holiday purchases. In its infancy, the streaming media player market was driven by growth from Apple and Roku, but over the past year and a half Amazon and Google have made a significant impact. In addition to streami...

Some large internet application providers increasingly source their own infrastructure from Asia-Pacific ODM/OEM vendors. Telecom network operators with tens of billions more revenue now look at the IT ecosystem and seek to benefit from what ABI Research calls the WebScale economies. In some ways, Telcos can emulate the in-house networking hardware design and development of WebScale firms -- such as Google, Facebook and Amazon -- and in other ways they cannot. It is no secret that much of the telecom infrastructure is based on the Intel x86 Xeon architecture and many of the Network Functions fit very well into a server architecture. In their latest global market study, ABI Research looked at the pros and cons of telecom operators seeking commercial "white box" IT hardware for their core network elements. The findings support inclusion of more commercial IT into the mobile broadband network and deployment with a top-tier IT vendor to minimize risk and uncertainty. ...

Media tablets may have reached market saturation in several markets -- particularly those made by Apple. Worldwide tablet shipment growth has slowed in the second quarter of 2013 (2Q13), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Worldwide tablet shipments finally experienced a sequential decline as total volumes fell -9.7 percent from 1Q13. However, the 45.1 million units shipped in the second quarter was up 59.6 percent from the same quarter in 2012, when tablet vendors shipped 28.3 million devices. Lacking a new product launch in March to help spur shipments, Apple's iPad saw a lower-than-predicted shipment total of 14.6 million units for the quarter -- that's down from 19.5 million in 1Q13. In years past, Apple has launched a new tablet heading into the second quarter, which resulted in strong quarter-over-quarter growth. Now, Apple is expected to launch new tablet products in the second half of the year, a move that better positions...

Driven by increasing demand worldwide, media tablet shipments continue to surge across the globe, growing 142.4 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation ( IDC ). Tablet shipments totaled 49.2 million units in 1Q13 -- surpassing that of the entire first half of 2012. With growth fueled by increased market demand for smaller screen devices, tablets sales have shown no sign of slowing down. Apple outperformed IDC's most recent projections for the quarter, shipping 19.5 million units compared to a forecast of 18.7 million units. The company, which historically has experienced a steep drop off in first quarter shipments (following strong holiday sales in the fourth quarter), saw some smoothing of that seasonality this year. Number two vendor Samsung also performed above expectations and managed to grow its shipments over the fourth quarter 2012 as more of the company's smaller-sized table...