Adoption of newer connected home solutions is still at the early adopter phase, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com). The survey, of nearly 10,000 online respondents in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia during the second half of 2016, found that only about 10% of households currently have connected home solutions.

Connected home solutions consist of a set of devices and services that are connected to each other and to the internet and can automatically respond to preset rules, be remotely accessed and managed by mobile apps or a browser, and send alerts or messages to the user(s).

"Although households in the developed world are beginning to embrace connected home solutions, providers must push beyond early adopter use," said Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner. "If they are to successfully widen the appeal of the connected home, providers will need to identify what...

By Rick Sutcliffe

What came first--the social egg or the technology chicken? It is apparent that the two exist in a feedback loop — the societal context engendering technological change and the technology, once sufficiently widespread, radically altering society.

While one can argue that the first society was agrarian, it was so only in the sense that there was no hunting, and gathering could be done with little travel, for Eden was already planted. The technology of the hunter-gatherer consists of whatever one's own hands can do or make from found materials. It extends no further than impaling or cutting implements and fire. While individual communities were small and often nomadic, in places like North America, the indigenous peoples often developed vast networks of trade and commerce. Human nature being what it is, conflict, conquest, and slavery were also woven into most of those societies.

The development of the plow changed everything,...

A new update to the “Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide” from International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts worldwide mobility revenues to reach $1.57 trillion in 2017, an increase of 2.6% over 2016.

Purchases of mobile hardware, software, and services is expected to continue apace over the next several years, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.1% over the 2015-2020 forecast period and reaching $1.67 trillion in 2020. Connectivity services will represent the largest category of mobility spending in 2017 followed by consumer and enterprise purchases of phones, tablets, and portable PCs, according to IDC (www.idc.com).

Combined, connectivity and hardware will deliver more than 95% of all mobility revenues this year with roughly two thirds coming from the consumer market, adds the research group. Most of the remaining revenues will come from enterprise purchases of mobility services,...

New data reveals that almost half of all consumers shop via their phones — and a two-second delay in load time can hurt bounce rates by 103%.
 
This data comes from SOASTA’s (www.soasta.com) semi-annual “State of Digital Performance” report, which analyzes the performance of retail, media and travel sites. SOASTA gathered 38.3 billion beacons’ worth of data (10 billion user visits) to determine the findings.  
 
The “State of Digital Performance” report also found that the median bounce rate for shoppers using mobile devices was almost 58%, while tablet shoppers had a median bounce rate of almost 45%. SOASTA found that only about 1-in-5 consumers actually make purchases using their phones.

This is important because phones are a critical tool in the browsing process, but there are barriers to completing transitions on mobile sites. SOASTA says that just a 100-millisecond delay in load time can...

The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 18% in 2017 to total $246.8 billion, up from $209.2 billion in 2016, according to Gartner (www.gartner.com).

The research group says the highest growth will come from cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS), which is projected to grow 36.8% in 2017 to reach $34.6 billion. Cloud application services (SaaS) is expected to grow 20.1% to reach $46.3 billion.

"The overall global public cloud market is entering a period of stabilization, with its growth rate peaking at 18% in 2017 and then tapering off over the next few years," said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. "While some organizations are still figuring out where cloud actually fits in their overall IT strategy, an effort to cost optimize and bring forth the path to transformation holds strong promise and results for IT outsourcing (ITO) buyers.”

Gartner predicts that through...

Technical recruiter Speak With A Geek (SWAG) is using its voice in the industry to raise awareness about the unique challenges faced by women in technology. The Bay Area agency hopes to educate and provide a deeper analysis into the topic of a lack of female representation in technology.
 
“Beginning almost at birth, girls receive subtle messaging that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are for not for them. Everything from gendered toys, stereotypical advertisements, and even the subtle suggestions by parents and teachers can steer girls in directions outside of STEM subjects,” said Sarah Noyes, director of Diversity & Inclusion at SWAG.
 
On average, only 18% of computer science degree holders are women. Recent studies by U.S. researchers analyzed nearly 1.4 million Github users and found that code change suggestions made by women are more likely to be accepted on the open-source code sharing platform than those made by men, but only if...

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) forecasts that smart home automation and monitoring devices will grow to over 770 million globally by 2021, representing an eleven-fold rise from just 68 million estimated in 2016.

The new research found that increasing adoption of platform evangelism and openness to partnerships is boosting third party development of devices, especially in developed markets. North America, Far East & China and West Europe will account for almost 75% of all households adopting the technology in 2021.

Juniper Research found that home automation hardware sales are rapidly outstripping subscription services, such as AT&T’s Digital Life offering. The research group forecasts that while homes adopting this payment model will increase, a one-off purchase model will see faster growth over the next five years. It found that revenues from hardware...

A new from IDC (www.idc.com) shows that worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will reach $122.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 24.4% over 2016.

Over the 2015-2020 forecast period, overall public cloud spending will experience a 21.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) – nearly seven times the rate of overall IT spending growth, according to the research group. By 2020, IDC forecasts public cloud spending will reach $203.4 billion worldwide.

Software as a Service (SaaS) will remain the dominant cloud computing type, capturing nearly two thirds of all public cloud spending in 2017 and roughly 60% in 2020. SaaS spending, which is comprised of applications and system infrastructure software (SIS), will in turn be dominated by applications purchases, which will make up more than half of all public cloud spending throughout the forecast period. However, spending on Infrastructure as a Service (...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.S. and worldwide are optimistic about the economy and confident about their future business performance, according to the inaugural American Express Global SME Pulse (business.americanexpress.com).

The new survey of senior executives and decision makers from SMEs across 15 countries reveals these businesses in the U.S. are even more optimistic about the global economy than their foreign counterparts. More than half of U.S. executives (54%, vs. 39% overall) are positive about the global economic outlook over the next 12 months. When asked to consider the local economic environment, they are even more upbeat, as nearly six in ten are positive (59% vs. 45% overall).

Executives are also confident in their ability to deliver increased revenues and profitability. More than two -thirds of the U.S. SMEs surveyed (69%, vs. 58% overall) expect significant revenue growth of at least 4 percent over the next 12 months. Forty two...

American consumers and business owners were blasted by an estimated 2.3 billion robocalls in January, a 3% decrease over the total calls received in December but a slight increase over the same month last year. These estimates are based on the YouMail Robocall Index (https://robocallindex.com), a guide that compiles the scope and location of the worst robocalling hotspots across the country by area code.

January marked the fifth straight month that the nation's robocall volume has fallen slightly month-over-month. The country's monthly robocalling total has dropped by 14.4% over the past half-year since August 2016 – a potential sign that the robocalling trend may be stabilizing due to a growing consumer backlash and the adoption of more robo-blocking services.

YouMail provides iPhone and Android apps that serve as an automated virtual assistant to replace the mobile voicemail service of its...

The use of mobile apps for business is heating up with nearly 80% of companies using more than 10 apps for business, according to MobileIron (www.mobileiron.com), a company “founded on the idea that mobile apps and data would become fundamental to mobilizing business workflows.”

The most popular enterprise apps are:

° Adoption metrics for Apple's Volume Purchase Program (VPP) and Device Enrollment Program (DEP);

° Enterprise security trends for Australia and the Netherlands in addition to Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US;

° Specific information about healthcare and financial services industries, in addition to government,

The state of enterprise apps 79% of the organizations in MobileIron's global customer base have more than 10 enterprise apps installed. Nearly one in five organizations (18%) uses VPP to streamline enterprise app deployment to users. The...

Production of drones for personal and commercial use is growing rapidly, with global market revenue expected to increase 34% to reach more than $6 billion in 2017 and grow to more than $11.2 billion by 2020, according to a new forecast from the Gartner, Inc (www.gartner.com) research group.

Almost three million drones will be produced in 2017, 39% more than in 2016.
While the civil markets (personal and commercial) have been wading through regulation by various governments, drones' popularity in these markets has not diminished. The overall drone market will see substantial growth, but the dynamics of the personal and commercial submarkets are very different, Gartner analysts said.

Personal drones will continue to increase in popularity as an affordable extension of consumers' smartphones for taking photographs and selfies and for other entertainment options. They can fly a short distance and time,...

New research from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) forecasts that, by 2021, nearly three billion users will access retail banking services via smartphones, tablets, PCs and smartwatches, up 53% from this year.

The research group finds that usage will continue to rise as consumers increasingly opt for banks offering the convenience of rapid, multi-channel digital services. This means that banks will need to focus on providing a more frictionless digital experience to their customers, especially if they are to remain market leaders.

The new research found that while traditional banks have so far remained a step behind in delivering innovation and maintaining their competitive edge against new fintech players, the situation is gradually changing.

“Technology is currently the big differentiator for all types of banks; including traditional banks and the so-called challenger banks...

Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com) forecasts that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31% from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. Total spending on endpoints and services will reach almost $2 trillion in 2017, according to the research group.
 
Regionally, Greater China, North America and Western Europe are driving the use of connected things and the three regions together will represent 67% of the overall Internet of Things (IoT) installed base in 2017. The consumer segment is the largest user of connected things with 5.2 billion units in 2017, which represents 63% of the overall number of applications in use. Businesses are on pace to employ 3.1 billion connected things in 2017.

"Aside from automotive systems, the applications that will be most in use by consumers will be smart TVs and digital set-top boxes, while smart electric meters and commercial security...

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that a gradual change in direction for fitness wearables towards healthcare devices will lead to over 75 million Americans using dedicated activity trackers by 2021, over double the current user base.

The new research has found that this shift in focus will alter consumers’ perception of wearable trackers, making them seem more necessary. Vendors like Fitbit, Withings and Misfit are leading this change, making integration with medical databases a priority and focusing on encouraging users to lead healthier lives, rather than getting “fitter.”

Juniper Research says this will move the wearables battleground from consumer hardware to institutional partnerships and software integration; players who are able to make their devices and systems part of healthcare practices will reap the largest rewards. The research group also...

One in two wireless sensor network (WSN) adopters are using cloud infrastructure for their industrial Internet of Things development, according to a recently published survey by ON World (www.onworld.com), which provides global business intelligence on Internet of Things markets.

"Wireless sensor networks (WSN) is the key technology for connecting billions of Internet of things within the next decade," says Mareca Hatler, ON World's research director.  "As early adopters of cloud-based IoT platforms, WSN users are defining industrial IoT solutions as well as picking the winners and losers."
Technologies that communicate up to one mile on average make up the majority of industrial sensor network solutions today.”

But over the next 5-10 years, the fastest growth will come from multi mile low power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies such as LoRa, Sigfox, RPMA, LTE M1 and NB1.  These new wireless...

Securecast.com, a security awareness and anti-phishing solution, has deployed a free autofill test tool with updated guidance on how to stay safe in regards to browser autofill features.

The autofill function on your browser is convenient to help complete web forms quickly but did you know that many browsers will autofill hidden fields and provide a lot more data then you may be aware of? Earlier this month a web developer and hacker published how the autofill functionality on your browser such as Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera and browser plugins like LastPass can be easily exploited into giving away far more data than you might intend simply by visiting a webpage.

How it works: it starts when an end user visits a phishing site that may look a lot like a trusted website or may be the result of a phishing email directing an end user to a phishing lure page. The webpage will have a simple form or text box where the end user will enter basic data such...

The future growth of the wearable technology market is expected to be driven by consumer preference for sophisticated gadgets, increasing growth prospects of next-generation displays in wearable devices, and growing popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) and connected devices, according to Markets and Markets (www.marketsandmarkets.com).

Applications such as fitness and sports, entertainment and multimedia, and garments and fashion are majorly considered under the scope of the consumer electronics vertical. The increasing demand for smart gadgets and gaming devices for interactive gaming and entertainment is driving the growth of the wearable technology market for the consumer electronics vertical, says Markets and Markets. Headwear and eyewear product segment estimated to grow at the highest rate in the wearable technology market between 2016 and 2022, according to the research group.

...

The global smartphone production volume for 2016 grew 4.7% annually to reach 1.36 billion units in total, according to market research firm TrendForce (www.trendforce.com).

Samsung continued to top the annual global ranking despite the discontinuation of Galaxy Note 7, suffering a marginal decline of 3.3% compared with the 2015 figure. Chinese brands Huawei, OPPO and Vivo respectively occupied the last three spots in the global top five and followed closely behind the second-place Apple.

Samsung had a difficult 2016 in the smartphone market and the company did not achieve its annual shipment target due to the fallout from the battery defect in Galaxy Note 7. Samsung’s global market share also contracted steadily, from 28% in 2014 to 25% in 2015 and then to 23% by the end of 2016. Much of the market share loss was attributed to the stiff competition from Chinese brands across all market segments, from...

A recent survey conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC) finds that a whopping 84% of U.S. consumers expressed concern regarding the security of their personally identifiable information (PII) and 70% told IDC (www.idc.com) that their concern is greater today than just a few years ago.

The newly published special study, which measures consumer privacy sentiment across four vertical industries (Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail, and Government), also includes the following key findings:

° Younger consumers, those age 18-35, demonstrate a higher concern for their personally identifiable information than do their 36-50 year-old counterparts.

° Hyper awareness and growing sensitivity toward data exposure appear to have consumers on the verge of making serious changes in their behavior.

"The dawn of Digital Transformation has already affected the relationship between individuals and...

New data from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that the consumer IoT (Internet of Things) installed base will reach over 15 billion units by 2021, an increase of 120% over 2016.

As evidenced at the CES show earlier this month, embedded connectivity is increasingly being used as a product differentiator. Juniper cautioned that the vast scale of this connectivity will, unless action is taken, lead to an unmanageable cybersecurity risk created by botnets in excess of one million units.

Juniper’s latest research found that recent IoT botnets will prove merely to be the tip of the cybersecurity iceberg. Botnets were uncovered as a key factor in the largest DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack ever recorded last year.

The report found that the use of botnets to disrupt Internet services form part of the near-term threat landscape. It predicted that botnets will be...

American consumers and businesses were overwhelmed by an estimated 29.3 billion robocalls in 2016, based on the YouMail Robocall Index (www.robocallindex.com), the nation's first guide that compiles the scope and location of the worst robocalling hotspots across the country by area code.  

This news marks the first time that any source has tracked the nation's collective robocall problem over an entire calendar year. In 2016:

° U.S. phones were inundated by an estimated 2.4 billion monthly robocalls, which equals 79.6 million daily robocalls on average, or 921 robocalls for every second of the year.

° Five major cities were blitzed by more than one billion robocalls each, including Atlanta, Dallas, New York, Chicago and Houston.

° The 15 most egregious robocalling numbers for the year were controlled by debt collectors for banks, phone companies, cable firms or retailers.

° ...

According to IDC (www.idc.com), vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 8.1% year over year to US$8.4 billion in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16). Ethernet switch continues to be the growth leader, as the market awaits new hyperscale datacenter builds to spur additional growth.

The overall share of cloud IT infrastructure sales climbed to 39.2% of all IT infrastructure spending in 3Q16, up from 34.7% a year ago. Revenue from infrastructure sales to private cloud grew by 8.2% to $3.3 billion, and to public cloud by 8.0% to $5.1 billion. In comparison, revenue in the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment decreased 10.8% year over year in the third quarter.

Private cloud infrastructure growth was led by Ethernet switch at 60.8% year-over-year growth, followed by storage at 9.0%, and server at 3.2...

Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to increase 2.9% in 2017, to $69.9 billion, according to Gartner (www.gartner.com). This is down from 5.1% growth in 2016.

"The stronger growth in 2016 was fueled by Increased spending in late 2016 which can be attributed to a NAND flash shortage which was more severe in late 2016 and will persist though most of 2017. This is due to a better-than-expected market for smartphones, which is driving an upgrade of NAND spending in our latest forecast," said David Christensen, senior research analyst at Gartner. "NAND spending increased by $3.1 billion in 2016 and several related wafer fab equipment segments showed stronger growth than our previous forecast. The thermal, track and implant segments in 2017 are expected to increase 2.5%, 5.6% and 8.4%, respectively.

Compared with early 2016, the semiconductor outlook has improved, particularly in memory, due to...