Global Cloud Computing Revenue Forecast

The Yankee Group global forecast for cloud computing revenue includes some key definitions.

Yankee Group defines midsize to large enterprises as 249 or more employees. The forecast also includes SMBs, which the firm defines as organizations with 2 to 250 employees. The forecast excludes consumer cloud services but does allow that small businesses will often adopt consumer cloud services for business use. Yankee Group excludes sole proprietors from infrastructure as a service and platform as a service because analysts do not believe the typical small business has a need for those services.

The forecast likely understates demand in the small business segment to the extent that many small software firms will have high incentives to buy platform and infrastructure services "as a service."

To forecast revenue, the analysts start with the concept of average revenue per employee per month. Yankee Group calculates ARPE for SaaS, IaaS and PaaS as $4, $2 and $1, respectively.

For example, a typical enterprise will spend $4 per employee per month on SaaS. This is equivalent to $48 per year per employee, or what a small business or sole proprietor might pay for an online backup service such as Mozy or Carbonite and simple collaboration software like Evernote or Dropbox.

Yankee Group Research Report

Rackspace Bullish on Cloud Computing, Of Course

Cloud computing implies data centers and good connectivity. That's good for Rackspace, and for capacity suppliers alike.

Starbucks Rolls Out Mobile Payments at 7500 Locations

Starbucks is launching its mobile payment system nationwide, to 6,800 of owned stores, plus more than 1,000 outlets inside Target stores. The Starbucks mobile payment system will work initially on iPhones, BlackBerries and iPod "Touch" devices, with an Android version in the works.

To use the system, Starbucks cardholders load an application onto their iPhone or BlackBerry smartphones. The application displays a barcode that's scanned at the register to pay for drinks. Users can also manage Starbucks accounts and find nearby stores with the application.

One in five Starbucks transactions is now made with the store cards, and mobile payments "will extend the way our customers experience and use their Starbucks Card," says Brady Brewer, vice president of card and brand loyalty. 

Customers apparently like using Starbucks Cards. They loaded more than $1.5 billion onto the cards last year, up 21 percent over 2009.

Starbucks said more than a third of its U.S. customers use the devices, and nearly three fourths of the smartphone-toting Starbucks customers have either an iPhone or a BlackBerry.

http://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/mobile-apps/starbucks-card-mobile

Emerging Market Mobile Growth Rate Slows

Though mobility has driven mobile growth globally over the last several years, attention in emerging markets is shifting to broadband.

Emerging market mobile subscriber growth will slow, with single-digit or low double-digit growth becoming the norm, according to analysts at Ovum.

Datamonitor | Media Center | Ovum predicts how telecoms will fare in 2011

Verizon Wireless iPhone Upgrades?

Lenovo to Focus on Tablets, Phones

Lenovo Group Ltd. will form a new business unit focused on mobile Internet and "digital home" devices, as it continues pushing to expand beyond its core personal-computer business.

PC and consumer electronics manufacturers have been invading each others' turf for some years, and the smartphone and tablet devices have emerged as growth areas for consumer electronics, so the move is no surprise.

Lenovo's Mobile Internet and Digital Home Business Group will make tablets, smartphones and devices for other categories like smart TV and cloud computing as well.

Lenovo to Focus on Tablets, Phones for Growth - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Record Apple Earnings

How Soon Will Linear TV Face a Real On-Demand Challenge?

Deloitte doesn't think a major challenge to linear TV delivery is going to happen soon. That shouldn't be taken as a firm judgment that on-demand formats will not be big at some point, or pose a grave challenge to the current model.

But most transitions of this magnitude take much longer than most supporters expect. But after the inflection point does occur, change will occur more rapidly than expected. It's a bit like an ice cube melting or water boiling: you can raise or lower temperature for quite some time and you still see a solid or a liquid. Then there is a quantum change. Most significant technology innovations get adopted in the same way. There is a longer than expected gestation period. Then there is rapid change.

Verizon Wireless Offers $200 Trade-In for an iPhone

Current Verizon customers who purchased and activated new smartphones, feature phones or certified pre-owned phones between Nov. 26, 2010, and Jan. 10, 2011, are eligible to receive up to a $200 Visa debit card when they purchase an iPhone 4 at full retail price by Feb. 28, 2011 and return their existing phone.

This offer is only available on consumer accounts with five lines or less, who are purchasing iPhone 4 through Verizon Wireless retail stores, telesales, or through verizonwireless.com.

iPhone 4. Verizon. It Begins

Ad Analytics Firms Create Consortium

The Consortium for Accountable Advertising, founded by Cross Commerce Media, Clickable, MediaMath, and TARGUSinfo, hopes to provide an alternative ad analytics alternative to Google.

Companies that join agree to allow their customers to share data. So much of ad tech these days is taking impression data or response rates and combining it with other data to better target ads or analyze how existing campaigns are doing. If an ad agency wants to start using MediaMath, they should be able to take all of their data from past campaign’s from Clickable and pour it into MediaMath’s engine, and vice versa.

Ad Tech Startups Banding Together

Acer to Phase Out Netbooks in Favor of Tablets

Acer seems to have concluded that tablets are a better business than netbooks. Acer says it will release both a 7-inch and a 10-inch tablet in 2011.

The new tablets are intended to gradually replace the company’s line of netbook computers, said Acer’s Taiwan sales manager Lu Bing-Hsian. “That’s the direction of the market.”

Oddly enough, as tablets proliferate, and get adopted by enterprises and consumers, it is getting harder to determine whether tablets are a new product category, or a replacement form factor for PCs.

Acer to Phase Out Netbooks in Favor of Tablets

Apple’s iPad Business Now Bigger Than MacBook Business

The iPad now generates more gross revenue for Apple than Apple's MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs. And it’s within spitting distance of surpassing Apple’s entire Mac business in terms of revenue.

If you want some idea of what the iPad means for Apple, not to mention the broader PC market, that statistic tells you what you need to know.

Apple’s iPad Business Now Bigger Than MacBook Business. Next Up: Entire Mac Business

Video to Account for More than 60% of Total Mobile Network Traffic in 2011

Video became the dominant form of mobile data traffic in 2010, accounting for more than 40 percent of the total volume in wireless networks worldwide, according to Bytemobile. With the rise of full-length and studio-quality videos and live streaming of multimedia content on mobile devices, as well as the emergence of two-way video communications, Bytemobile expects mobile data traffic to spike to an all-time high in 2011, when video-based content will account for over 60 percent of network traffic.

Personal video communications will dominate wireless network capacity, such that 10 percent of subscribers consume 90 percent of total network traffic.

Bytemobile Forecasts Video to Account for More than 60% of Total Mobile Network Traffic in 2011

iPads Got 7% of Global PC Market Sales in Fourth Quarter

Apple reports selling 7.3 million iPads in the fourth quarter of 2010. Since the PC market represents something like 100 million units a quarter, one might infer that the iPad in the fourth quarter represented perhaps seven percent of total PC sales.

iPads Are Already 7% Of Global PC Market