items tagged with Research

Stories abound day in day out on the damage the global economic crisis is doing to all industries and many businesses, but there’s a new report just out revealing that PC demand has remained relatively resilient in the face of this downturn compared to the last.

The financial crisis has hit the overall mobile phone market in Australia, with a 16 percent decline in sales last year, but there was some joy amidst the gloom and doom with the smartphone segment defying the recession and growing by 7.6 percent.

That devil of a Conficker worm that’s never far from the surface these days is likely to cause a significant increase in spam levels over the next three months, according to a report by yet another security firm that’s closely monitoring the worm’s exploits.

Major vendors who traditionally hold sway in the business intelligence and performance management software market are under increasing pressure to retain their marketshare from technologies like software-as-a-service (SaaP), pre-packaged appliances and open source.

Many Australians have apparently reacted to the current financial crisis by abandoning or limiting their use of credit and debit cards and are now using cash as a way to control their spending, according to a study by ATM manufacturer, NCR.

There are good opportunities for Australian utility companies to benefit from ICT innovation and investment, with ICT spending by the utilities market in Australia forecast to grow from $1,120 million last year to A$1,308 million in 2012.

Microsoft’s sales of new software have taken a hefty hit from the economic downturn but the sheer size of the company’s existing share of the market, with its software installed on many millions of machines worldwide, has seen its revenues hold up well in a belt-tightening market.

In the midst of the world financial crisis, green IT still remains a top priority on the IT agenda of governments and is growing in importance for the public sector, according to a report released by Ovum after the recent G20 summit in London.

Hewlett Packard outstripped IBM in revenue in the fourth quarter of last year despite the global economic downturn with particularly strong demand for its products in the US market, according to the latest business benchmark study by research firm, Technology Business Research (TBR).

There’s been rapid adoption of GPS in mobile phones, with mobile vendors seeing location-based services as a major untapped business opportunity.

The global ramping up of large-scale virtual server implementations is likely to drive demand for what IDC is calling a newly defined competitive market - virtual server management software – for distributed systems.

In the midst of doom and gloom, mobile broadband has proven to be Australia's beacon of light, with the market doubling in the past year to more than $1 billion.