Digital Lifescapes

The time has come. The global transition to electric vehicles (EVs) is rapidly accelerating, propelled by government initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.  As concerns over the environmental impact of traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles mount, nations worldwide are implementing aggressive policies to spur the adoption of EVs and the deployment of vehicle battery charging infrastructure. According to the latest global market study by Juniper Research, this driving force of progressive government intervention is catalyzing EV transformation growth. Electric Vehicle Market Development Juniper analysts have reviewed the pivotal role government policies are playing in shaping the future of the EV market. They highlight the various incentives, subsidies, and mandates introduced by countries globally to encourage rapid EV adoption. One of the most striking findings from the Juniper Research study is the projected 194 percent growth in the to...

Many nations across the globe are eager to welcome additional, readily available and competitively priced, broadband internet access services. The Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) market is expanding to fulfill the demand for high-speed broadband connectivity for both business and consumer segments. Fifth-generation (5G) FWA, a powerful platform providing an alternative broadband service offering, will be accelerating the FWA market. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, the FWA market will exceed 180 million subscriptions and generate $70 billion in revenue in 2026. The 5G FWA market will then account for 40 percent of the total global FWA market. 5G Wireless Broadband Market Development Since 5G deployments continue to accelerate, operators are taking advantage of the 5G technology to provide high-capacity FWA services. High-speed and low latency supported by 5G networks enable providers to offer an attractive alternative to fixed broadband services in the areas ...

The video entertainment market continues to evolve in America. Low-cost, new and improved over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services have made it virtually impossible for the traditional pay-TV providers to justify their high-cost offerings. Meanwhile, the legacy pay-TV service providers can't halt the continued loss of subscribers, as consumers seek and find alternative sources of news, weather and video entertainment online. U.S. multi-channel defections ballooned in the third quarter, amplified by tighter promotions at a time when consumers need little additional motivation to seek OTT alternatives, according to the latest market study by Kagan, a TMT research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence . Pay-TV Market Development Kagan estimates traditional multi-channel subscribers fell by nearly 1.9 million in the three months ended September 30 -- that's a 25 percent spike from the previous largest drop in the second quarter of 2019. The combined tradition...

Semiconductors are the heart of information technology and telecommunications systems. Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $343.5 billion in 2016 -- that's a 2.6 percent increase from 2015 revenue of $334.9 billion, according to the latest global market study by Gartner. The top 25 semiconductor vendors' combined revenue increased 10.5 percent, a significantly better performance than the overall industry's growth. However, most of the reported growth resulted from vendor merger and acquisition (M&A) activity. Semiconductor Sector Market Development "The semiconductor industry rebounded in 2016, with a weak start to the year, characterized by inventory correction, giving way to strengthening demand and an improving pricing environment in the second half," said James Hines research director at Gartner . Worldwide semiconductor revenue growth was supported by increasing production in many electronic equipment segments, improving NAND flash memory pric...

Smartphones are essential to mobile internet growth, and the related economic development that these devices enable within emerging markets. That being said, there's also a significant segment of the developed markets that favors lower-cost devices with 'good enough' features and performance. Mobile phone vendors shipped a total of 347.4 million smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of 2017 (1Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Smartphone Global Market Development According to the IDC assessment, consumers continue to show demand for smartphones and vendor flagship hype seems strong as ever. Worldwide smartphone shipments grew 4.3 percent in 1Q17, which was slightly higher than IDC's previous forecast of 3.6 percent growth. "The first quarter smartphone results further prove that the smartphone industry is not dead and that growth still exists," said Ryan Reith, program vice president at IDC . "...

Just when industry analysts were starting to believe that the buyers of cloud computing services were motivated more by upside business opportunity, and less by cutting IT infrastructure costs, a new price war has erupted that's driven yet another vendor race to the bottom. In its latest analysis of cloud computing services, 451 Research revealed that the cloud price battlefield has shifted from virtual machines (VMs) to cloud object storage. The analyst firm predicts that other services -- particularly databases -- will undergo the same pricing pressures over the next 18 months. Cloud Services Market Development Until recently, the prices of cloud related services beyond compute held steady in the face of intense vendor competition, according to the latest market study by 451 Research. Virtual machines have been the traditional battleground for price cuts, as providers have sought to gain attention and differentiation. The tide has now turned, with cloud object storage pri...

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...

More people are satisfied with the smartphone they own and have no interest to replace the device -- that's a problem for some vendors. Worldwide smartphone shipments will reach 1.46 billion units with a year-over-year growth rate of just 1.6 percent in 2016, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Although growth remains slightly positive, it is down significantly from the 10.4 percent growth in 2015. Much of the smartphone sales slowdown is also being attributed to the ongoing market saturation and decline expected in developed regions (such as North America) during 2016. Developed markets as a whole are expected to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -0.2 percent, while emerging markets will experience a CAGR of 5.4 percent over the 2015-2020 forecast period. Smartphone Market Development Challenges "Growth in the smartphone market is quickly becoming reliant on replacing existing handsets rather than seeking n...

Once upon a time, technology industry analysts optimistically reported on the market opportunities for telecom service providers within the emerging public cloud computing arena. A decade later, the outlook has been softened by the realities of the competitive marketplace. Results from the latest global market study by Technology Business Research (TBR) indicate telecom service providers are re-evaluating their public cloud strategies, due to the ongoing struggle to gain market share against the pure plays and incumbents -- such as AWS, IBM, Microsoft and Google. Despite carrier cloud providers generating over $4.5 billion in public cloud revenue in 2015, the segment is still dominated by large incumbents, particularly AWS and Google, as aggressive pricing competition makes pure public cloud unprofitable without the hyperscale advantage. Reassessing Market Development Strategies "Carriers, including Verizon, AT&T and BT, are de-emphasizing public cloud and are instead ...

According to the latest global Cloud Price Index (CPI) study, the cloud services sector isn't a commodity market, with price barely impacting market share as customers look for value-added services. Moreover, cloud computing skills and proven experience are still in short supply. That's why cloud service buyers seek information, guidance and support from vendors. The CPI research demonstrates that reduced cloud pricing hasn't significantly changed buyer sentiment. Instead, the supply of higher-value cloud services is key to long-term, sustainable and profitable vendor growth strategies. 451 Research finds that virtual machine pricing has dropped 12 percent on average over the past 18 months, while the price of storage, NoSQL, load balancing, bandwidth and other cloud services have remained stable and continue to provide margins. Exploring the Cloud Market Dynamics Analysts believe that as the price for cloud compute continues to fall toward zero, the savvy hypers...

According to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), vendors shipped a total of 334.9 million smartphones worldwide during the first quarter of 2016 (1Q16) -- that's up slightly from the 334.3 million units in 1Q15, marking the smallest year-over-year growth on record. The minimal growth in this quarter is primarily attributed to strong smartphone saturation in developed markets, as well as a year-over-year decline from both Apple and Samsung, the two market leaders. The biggest change to the market, however, was the addition of lesser-known Chinese brands OPPO and vivo, which pushed out previous fourth and fifth place players Lenovo and Xiaomi, respectively. Market Development in China Matures As the China market matures, the appetite for smartphones has slowed dramatically as the explosion of uptake has passed its peak. In 2013, China's year-over-year shipment growth was 62.5 percent; by 2015, it had dropped to 2.5 percent. Conversely, ...

Technology Business Research (TBR) forecasts revenue of $12 billion in 2020 for the global enterprise software-defined networking (SDN) market, that's a CAGR of 70.2 percent from 2015 to 2020. Moreover, it's going to become a substantial portion of the overall enterprise networking infrastructure market, as it displaces legacy technologies. Large enterprise organizations are in the early stages of SDN trials to reduce network bottlenecks. As the technological and business value of the SDN architecture is established, ongoing user adoption will expand over time. Notably, vendors will need to help their customers evolve their internal organization silos to support digital business transformation projects and enable SDN to flourish. Open Networking Systems Gain Momentum "Adoption is still fairly small and concentrated," said Krista Macomber, senior analyst at TBR . But 2016 will be a telling year as standards bodies, such as the Open Networking Foundation, matu...

There are a variety of reasons why senior executives and IT managers will choose to adopt cloud computing services. While a business transformation goal is often a high-priority for many, IT investment and operational cost reduction is also very important to most decision makers. Like any other significant procurement, buyers ultimately seek the best value for their IT spend. 451 Research released its latest assessment of the worldwide public cloud computing market, analyzing the variances in service pricing across the globe. The findings show that U.S. cloud service pricing is the most competitive globally, overall. Moreover, on average, it typically costs between 7 percent and 19 percent more to host the same cloud application in Europe and 14 percent to 38 percent more in Asia-Pacific region -- the variance is usually due to the complexity of the cloud application. There are, however, other factors to consider. Regional Assessment of Cloud Offerings According to the 451 Rese...

Technology industry analysts are reporting that the current trends within the smartphone marketplace are being led by two key phenomena -- more low-cost, high-value product introductions and dominant mobile service providers being forced to react to the disruptive actions of savvy competitors. Vendors shipped a total of 355.2 million smartphones worldwide in the third quarter of 2015 (3Q15), that's up 6.8 percent from the 332.6 million units in 3Q14, marking the second highest quarter of shipments on record, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The 3Q15 shipments were slightly below the previous forecast of 363.8 million units, largely due to lower than expected Apple iPhone shipments, as well as Google Android flagship introductions from several top-tier OEMs. "The vendor landscape and product offerings are really unique at the moment as many markets are seeing consumers become more aware of alternative buying options when it com...

As the video entertainment market evolves in America, the traditional pay-TV service providers are seeking to maintain their subscriber base in the face of rising operational costs related to content, which often directly translates into higher service fees for their customers. Meanwhile, short-term promotional discounts are still being applied to attract potential new customers to the traditional pay-TV offerings. But it's becoming increasing difficult to compete with the value-based pricing of the over-the-top (OTT) streaming video services (Netflix, Hulu, etc.) . According to the latest market study by Leichtman Research Group (LRG), 83 percent of all U.S. households nationwide subscribe to some form of pay-TV service. That being said, the percentage of households that subscribe to a pay-TV service is down from 87 percent in 2010. "Changes in the dynamics of the pay-TV industry are not driven just by those exiting the category, but also those coming into the category,...

Mobile internet users in North America have endured high-cost services (compared to other global regions) as a result of market consolidation -- where fewer service providers compete for customers. That all changed when the status-quo was broken by T-Mobile's lower prices. People rejoiced. Well, most people. Some mobile network operators struggle to generate new wireless communication service revenue growth in the U.S., due to the ongoing pricing war and the saturated smartphone market, according to the latest study by Technology Business Research (TBR). In an attempt to offset declining service revenue, some American mobile network operators are focused on expanding their connected device offerings and increasing equipment revenue through un-subsidized smartphone purchases. However, the smart ones also prepared for this scenario by lowering the inherent high costs within their operations. "Verizon remained the top-ranked U.S. wireless carrier in 2Q15 and led the industr...

Worldwide personal computer (PC) shipments are expected to fall by -8.7 percent in 2015 and not stabilize until 2017 at the earliest, according to the the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). According to the IDC assessment, the latest PC forecast has growth declining further through 2016 -- which will now amount to five continuous years of declining shipments. Growth should resume in 2017, led by the commercial market, while consumer volume continues a small decline through the end of the forecast period in 2019. Although IDC had expected the second quarter of 2015 to be a transition period, final results nonetheless shrank even more than expected due to the ongoing large inventory of notebook PCs from prior quarters and severe constraints posed by the decline of major currencies relative to the U.S. Dollar. In addition to economic issues, free upgrades of Windows 10, a relative dearth of newer models in the short term, and distribution channe...

According the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), total smartphone shipments are expected to grow by 10.4 percent in 2015 to reach 1.44 billion units. This new forecast is lower than IDC's previous smartphone forecast of 11.3 percent year-over-year growth in 2015. Smartphone shipments within China will now join North America and Western Europe in a more mature growth pattern. However, the ongoing fall of average selling prices (ASPs) will fuel steady growth through the end of the forecast period, with global shipments forecast to reach 1.9 billion units in 2019. As the largest market for smartphones -- China consumed 32.3 percent of all new smartphone shipments in 2014 -- its importance is still significant, even if its growth has begun to slow. Shipments are forecast to grow just 1.2 percent year-over-year in 2015, which is down from 19.7 percent in 2014. China will remain the largest market for smartphone volumes throughout the forecast perio...

The rigid American telecommunications services sector is about to undergo a significant change as the major mobile network service providers abandon phone subsidies and the previously required 2-year contracts for subscribers. The most apparent effect is likely to be many more consumers will choose to keep their working smartphones for a longer period, and fewer people may be able to rationalize the full cost of a new premium smartphone. That being said, it's highly likely that mobile operators are also going to see more customer churn, as smart people shop for better deals and consider alternative offers. T-Mobile seems to be in the most advantageous position as this trend unfolds, with Google Project Fi also potentially gaining market share. Meanwhile, the smartphone market in North America should witness greater demand for affordable (significantly lower-cost) new devices. This trend will favor the rising Chinese smartphone vendors. In contrast, the vendor likely to be ne...

While it's true that cloud computing infrastructure is often primarily deployed to enable an IT organization achieve a business agility goal, there's always the expectation that an operating cost reduction will also be the outcome -- as a direct result of cloud service adoption. In particular, the tier-one hyperscale public cloud service providers are able to influence Line of Business leaders by demonstrating how they can offer limitless access to more IaaS resources for a lower cost. This trend continues to raise the bar of expectations for CIOs that currently rely upon legacy IT infrastructure. Make no mistake, the competitive cost assessment of IT services will likely remain a constant KPI -- used as a peer-group benchmark test that's applied to the performance evaluation of every CIO and IT manager in a large enterprise. Why Superior Negotiation Skills Matter According to the latest Cloud Price Index from 451 Research, while on-demand pricing has fallen only sl...