IDC research group (www.idc.com) estimates that, including internal spending, the world's largest companies spent US$895 billion on technology in 2014.  IT vendors of all flavors long to harness a share of their hefty IT wallets not only for the revenue gains, but also for the bragging rights. 

The activities of the largest IT spenders provide a glimpse into how these industry leaders are taking steps to transform their businesses for 2015 and beyond, says the research group. As we enter the "innovation stage" of the third platform, IDC expects to see these companies focusing on value creation on top of their current technology foundation.  Key findings of the report include:

° Wal-Mart was the largest IT spender worldwide in 2014. Bank of America placed second, followed by Citigroup, AT&T, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

° Nine out of ten spenders increased their IT spending from 2013 to 2014.

° On...

Increased adoption of smartphones and tablets has led to the growth of the global mobile gaming market, which is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21.39% from 2015-2019, says research firm Technavio (www.technavio.com).

Smart mobile devices have seen huge demand as gaming platforms in recent years. The diverse connectivity options available on these devices like 4G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are helping them edge-out laptops as sought-after platforms.

"More than 60% of users play games on their mobile devices on a daily basis and nearly 65% of the money spent on smartphones and tablets is for gaming purposes," says Faisal Ghaus, vice president of Technavio.

The latest report by the research group also draws attention towards a shift in gamer demographics, which is affecting the global video game market as a whole. There has been a drastic increase in the number of women and child...

The mobile apps marketplace is maturing as users declare themselves satisfied with current engagement rates, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com). As users integrate apps more deeply into their lives, app providers will need to stay one step ahead and focus their development, marketing and branding more intensely toward retention strategies, according to the research group.

"After eight years of searching for, downloading and using smartphone apps, users are maturing in their usage behaviors," says Brian Blau, research director at Gartner." However, we may see those patterns change in the future as users integrate apps more deeply into their daily lives."

User interest in apps has mellowed now that they have integrated apps into their use of personal technology and their interaction with brands while online. Although usage remains high, users may not want or need more apps in the future....

There are more than 28 million small business owners in the United States, some 80% of whom are non-employers. Small business use of mobile devices—in particular "smart" devices—opens up a world of opportunity, much like it has done in the consumer marketplace, according to Packaged Facts, a a division of MarketResearch.com.

As mobile technology and payments continue to converge, more and more small businesses will look to their smartphones to make payments and meet their financial services needs, according to the market research publisher. ApplePay provides a case in point. Many payments industry observers view Apple's ApplePay mobile wallet as the first product with the potential to push payments into the realm of mobile point-of-sale, which has thus far had difficulty gaining mainstream traction.

Small business participants may make especially strong targets for this payments solution, notes Packaged Facts research director David Sprinkle. For one, they are more...

ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com) forecasts US$3.1 billion global revenues in 2015 for biometrics in the consumer and enterprise sectors with much of the growth coming from smartphone solutions.

Existing smartphone hardware provides a relatively stable foothold for some authentication modalities but rapid advances in the biometrics field will drive further smartphone hardware upgrades. Meanwhile, pioneering algorithm design and cloud computing services are transforming user authentication.

Dimitrios Pavlakis, digital security research analyst, ABI Research says: "Biometry is moving rapidly into the security ecosystem and its adoption by CE [consumer electronic] devices will jumpstart this phenomenon. Specifically, smartphone biometrics provide not only a secure alternative for authentication, mobile payments, and BYOD [bring your own device] initiatives but also enhance user experience, navigation...

Starting from a base of $249 million 2015, global mobile biometrics revenue is forecast to reach $3.5 billion by 2024, with cumulative revenue for the 10-year period totaling $17.5 billion, according to Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets).

Biometrics for mobile devices have finally reached a tipping point. The march began with the release of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and later the iPad, each subsequently matched by Android competitors. These smartphones and tablets finally have enough processing power and hardware capabilities to put biometrics directly into their users' hands.

Biometrics, whether for mobile devices or large stationary systems, typically perform one of two functions: authentication, proving that someone is who they claim to be, or identification, figuring out who someone is. Nearly all consumer-facing use cases are authentication and nearly all identification uses are...

The global smart TV market is expected to post a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 20.37% from 2014-2019, as consumers are spending more than ever on electronics, according to a new report from research firm Technavio (www.technavio.com).

The new report draws attention towards economic growth in developing countries that has improved the financial status of a significant portion of the population. This has resulted in higher consumer purchasing power, which has contributed to increased spending on consumer electronic goods.

"The increased number of technologically advanced devices available in the market is expected to trigger the demand for devices that offer multifunctional capabilities to consumers," says Faisal Ghaus, vice president of Technavio.

What's more, the Technavio report emphasizes the increased adoption of smart TVs in advertising. The growing popularity of smart TVs and 3D TVs...

Worldwide combined shipments of devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) are estimated to reach 2.5 billion units in 2015, an increase of 2.8% over 2014, according to Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com). In spending terms, the global computing devices market (PCs and ultramobiles) is on pace to reach US$226 billion, a 7.2% decline in current U.S. dollars, says the research group.

Stripping out the impact of exchange-rate movements (constant U.S. dollars), the global computing devices spending will decrease 3.1 percent in 2015. The global PC market is on pace to total 306 million units in 2015, a 2.4 percent decrease over 2014. 

"The fall in PC purchases is primarily due to expected price increases by vendors in Europe and other regions, which is forced by local currency depreciation against the dollar," says Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. "The currency squeeze is forcing PC vendors to...

Increasing urbanization is putting unprecedented pressure on city mayors to constantly balance the challenge of resource constraints against environmental sustainability concerns.

Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com)estimates that 1.1 billion connected things will be used by smart cities in 2015, rising to 9.7 billion by 2020. 

Smart homes and smart commercial buildings will represent 45% of total connected things in use in 2015, due to investment and service opportunity. Gartner estimates that this will rise to 81% by 2020, according to the research group.

"Smart cities represent a great revenue opportunity for technology and services providers (TSPs), but providers need to start to plan, engage and position their offerings now," says Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president at Gartner. 

Gartner defines a smart city as an urbanized area where multiple sectors cooperate to achieve sustainable...

According to the latest report by the TechNavio (www.technavio.com) research group, the number of data breaches has increased in recent years.

Encryption software encrypts data, files, folders and software with a secret code that only registered users can access. With encryption software, organizations can store sensitive data in secure storage in the cloud, which can be accessed only by authorized users.

"Because data breaches can be catastrophic for an organization, encryption software is being adopted increasingly to control these violations and create a secure information environment," says Faisal Ghaus, vice president of TechNavio.

What's more, the new TechNavio report emphasizes the growing adoption of BYOD policies as a key driver for market growth. BYOD policy offers enterprises various benefits like improved productivity, employee satisfaction and cost saving options, but it can also open...

Sponsored data business models benefit consumers by expanding the mobile ecosystem to new partners that want to foot part of the bill for consumers to use wireless data — according to the Strategy Analytics (www.strategyanalytics.com) Wireless Operator Strategies (WOS) service report, "Measuring the Success of Sponsored Data."

There are two main types of sponsored data—offers that provide free access or zero-rated data traffic, and campaigns that reward the consumer with a free data allocation. AT&T has been enabling brands, developers and other companies to explore the potential of sponsored data, in partnership with leading US startups like Aquto, DataMi and Syntonic  that provide cloud-based solutions with rich analytics for tracking success, according to the research group. Key findings from the report:

° Sponsored data use cases gaining traction today range from advertising, free...

New data from Parks Associates (www.parksassociates.com) shows that smartphone and tablet app users regularly use nearly eight apps on their smartphone and nearly seven apps on their tablet.

The average user spends 3.3 hours per week using social networking apps on a smartphone, while gaming and music apps score 2.7 and 2.6 hours per week, respectively. Fourteen percent of smartphone users and 26% of tablet users do not regularly use an app.

"Although the number of smartphone users has greatly expanded since 2012, the average app use among smartphone users has held relatively constant," says Harry Wang, Director, Health & Mobile Product Research, Parks Associates. "This leaves an increasingly wide variety of apps competing for the finite attention span of the consumer."

Parks Associates' research shows smartphone penetration increased rapidly over the past few years. Smartphone...

The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments increased 7.0% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2014 (4Q14), according to new data from IDC (www.idc.com).

The enterprise segment continued to grow at a steady rate and increased another 7.4% over the same period last year, notes the research group. After an uptick in year-over-year growth in 3Q14 (9.4%), the enterprise WLAN market growth rate resumed a pattern of incremental growth rate decreases. For the full year 2014, the enterprise WLAN market grew 8.5% year over year, significantly lower than the gains seen in the last few years.

The 802.11ac standard continues to see adoption at a breakneck pace in the enterprise segment. After six full quarters of product availability, the 802.11ac standard already accounts for just over 30% of dependent access point shipments and 44% of dependent access point revenues,...

The global advertising market surpassed a half-trillion USD in 2014 totaling $525 billion with the top 10 countries accounting for nearly three-quarters of global advertising spend, according to new data from Strategy Analytics (www.strategyanalytics.com).

The United States alone accounted for over a third of global ad spend in 2014, 3.8 times higher than the second largest market, China, and over 16 times larger than Canada, the 10th largest market. Meanwhile China surpassed Japan in 2013 to become the second largest advertising market and will surpass Germany (4th largest market) and the U.K. (5th largest market) markets combined in 2015.

"While in absolute terms U.S. ad spend continues to grow its share of global advertising it is declining as spend in other regions grows." says Leika Kawasaki. "Despite this, the U.S. remains at #1 in ad spend across all media types and we do not...

The healthcare sector is ill-prepared for the new cyberage, according to ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com). Hospitals, clinics, trusts, and insurers are constantly under attack from malicious online agents, says the research group.

The value of personal health information, made more easily available with the convergence to electronic health records, is 10 times that of financial data such as credit card numbers. Medical identity theft and fraud are on the rise, and healthcare providers are struggling to cope, with the past 2 years seeing hundreds of instances of data breaches leaking millions of personal records.

Yet the industry spends very little on cybersecurity, comparatively to other regulated critical industries. ABI Research calculates cybersecurity spending for healthcare protection will only reach US$10 billion globally by 2020, just under 10% of total spend on critical infrastructure...

New data from Parks Associates (www.parksassociates.com) reveals that approximately 10% of U.S. broadband households have a smart device with energy-related functions-including 8% with a smart thermostat and 6% with smart lighting. A smart energy device includes a programmable thermostat, light bulb, power strip, outlet, or plug adapter capable of connecting to the Internet.

"Smart products introduce new capabilities into the home, including data analytics that utilities can use to promote and enhance their energy efficiency (EE) and demand response (DM) programs," says Tom Kerber, director, Research, Home Controls & Energy, Parks Associates. "Energy providers can use the new capabilities in smart meters and smart home products to reinvigorate energy management business models, including bundles with value-added monitoring services, where our research finds strong consumer interest. In this...

TechNavio (www.technavio.com), a tech-focused research firm, says the cloud security software market will see a compound annual growth rate of 48.46% from 2014-2019.

According to the new report, traditional on-site security software has a high total cost of ownership, as it includes high upfront software license and software implementation costs, coupled with high maintenance costs. Cloud security software circumvents these expenses, since cloud vendors are responsible for the implementation, maintenance, updates, and backup of software, thereby reducing the need for internal IT administration.

"Cloud security software eliminates connection-related expenditures because it is offered with a wide variety of connection options," says Faisal Ghaus, vice president of TechNavio.

The new TechNavio report also draws attention towards growing partnerships between cloud service providers (CSPs) and...

Data from 451 Research reveals that the worldwide datacenter install base grew at +0.2% Y/Y [year-over-year] in Q4 2014 to 4.3 million datacenters and IT sites. The weak demand for new facilities was primarily driven by a decline in traditional enterprise demand, particularly in mature markets, according to the research group.

This decline was offset by the booming demand for large premium and hyperscale facilities from cloud, service provider and multi-tenant datacenter vendors. While datacenters from those organizations are typically very large, from a datacenter count perspective they are still the minority, representing only 5% of the market combined when server closets and rooms are excluded. 

From a square footage perspective, enterprises continue to control the vast majority of the worldwide market, at 83%. MTDC and cloud providers control 12% and 5%, respectively. That balance will continue to shift over time as enterprises invest less in their own datacenter...

The worldwide pay-TV market is expected to have grown 5% in 2014, surpassing 924.4 million subscribers, according to ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com).

"IPTV is expected to grow a market leading 14% in 2014, followed by satellite TV platform at 7%. The growth rates of cable and terrestrial TV platforms are expected to slow to around 3%," comments Jake Saunders, vice president and practice director of Core Forecasting at the research group.

Global cable TV market growth is driven by the Asian-Pacific and Latin American markets. A combination of the two regions is likely to add over 13 million subscribers in 2014 while the cable TV market in North America is expected to decline approximately 1% in 2014. In 3Q 2014, major cable TV operators in North America lost over 400,000 TV customers, although cable companies are doing well in broadband.

Video streaming services such as Netflix and TiVo,...

The worldwide personal and entry-level storage (PELS) shipments remained flat year over year in 2014, finishing the year with 75.7 million units, according to the IDC (www.idc.com) research group.

Annual shipment values were down -1.5% year over year to $6.6 billion. Unit shipments were down slightly in the fourth quarter (4Q14), declining -0.9% from a year ago to 20.5 million units, while 4Q14 shipment values were also down, declining -5.2% to $1.7 billion.

"The personal and entry-level storage market finished 2014 flat, despite strong growth during the previous quarter," says Jingwen Li, research analysts, Storage Systems, IDC. "The entry-level portion of the market showed consistent growth throughout the year, but it remains too small to drive growth for the entire market. The largest market segment, personal storage, fell victim to continued price declines, increased competition from public cloud providers, and...

The home care/lawn care robotics market will surpass US$2.9 billion by 2019, up from US$1.2 billion in 2014, according to a new study published by ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com). Approximately seven million robotic home care/lawn care products will be sold in 2019, up from 3.4 million in 2014, representing a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 15.6%, notes the research group.

"The home care/lawn care sector is the largest, fastest growing, and most dynamic component of the overall consumer robotics marketplace, and this will remain so for the foreseeable future," says Dan Kara, practice director, Robotics at ABI Research. "Moreover, the addressable markets for these devices are substantial, penetration levels are nowhere near saturation, and in some cases markets are virtually untouched. New advances in low-cost, highly functional, consumer class enabling technology, coupled with greater levels of...

Market intelligence from ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com) finds that the global mobile multi-factor authentication software and service market will be worth US$1.6 billion by the end of 2015.

Username and passwords have been widely used to authenticate user identity but fail to provide adequate authentication, says the research group. Authentication-based attacks continue to plague organizations of all sizes with the majority of breaches being attributed to weak or absent authentication.

This has created significant market demand for mobile user authentication technologies that can be used to provide additional factor of authentication thus adding an extra layer of security. One-time-passwords (OTPs) and tokens have emerged as the preferred choice of authentication as they offer greater security because the password they generate is only valid for a single session/transaction.

Digital...

Rampant interest in mobile payments is expected by 2015, along with a significant increase in mobile commerce. Due to this, Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com) predicts that by 2017, U.S. customers' mobile engagement behavior will drive mobile commerce revenue in the U.S. to 50%of U.S. digital commerce revenue.

A recent Gartner survey found that mobile commerce currently generates 22% of digital commerce revenue. 

"Some sectors will migrate more quickly than others to accepting mobile payments and promoting mobile commerce," says Jennifer Polk, research director at Gartner. "For example, big-box retailers may not need to move as quickly as other industries because the in-store experience is still a critical part of their value proposition and the customer experience, making digital and mobile commerce a smaller portion of their overall revenue. However, new credit card standards will cause a shift in liability...

As network operators and vendors continue to achieve breakthroughs in upload and download speeds, the growth in total mobile data traffic shows no sign of slowing down. ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com) predicts that the average monthly data consumed per wireless subscriber will increase from 445 megabytes in 2014 to 2,289 megabytes by 2019.

In early December 2014, Nokia Networks unveiled its carrier aggregation solution with Ooredoo and China Mobile which was capable of reaching 300 Mbps uplink and 3.8 Gbps downlink. Earlier on, ZTE demonstrated the world’s first 40 MHz LTE uplink carrier aggregation solution.

These breakthroughs and stability of upload and download throughput, once commercially deployed, will enable mobile users to rely on mobile devices as primary entertaining and productivity solutions, in addition to communication.

"Therefore, it is not surprising that applications such...