The ill winds of global recessionary times – or at the least a prolonged downturn in the global economy – are threatening the thriving smart device market with its own ‘recession’,with one prediction that the effects could be most acutely felt in the premium tablet sector, with net device sales likely to plateau or decline.

With tough economic conditions continuing, governments around the world are predicted to respond to the more austere times by turning to cloud computing, along with data analytics, which analysts predict will attract an ‘explosion’ of interest from governments in 2012.

Demand for Australian executives has slumped further to the lowest levels in eight years, with demand last month down in all business sectors. The IT industry was not immune, suffering a fall in demand in October, but recording a good result compared with other sectors.

An unflattering and quite damning report on wholesale telecoms suppliers points to some real problems in the market with suggestions that companies need to start listening to their customers if they don’t want to see further ‘deterioration’ in their performance.

Almost three-quarters of Australians are now prepared to spend their own money on upgrading their skills, instead of waiting for employers to provide training, with many of them also believing they will change their career and reinvent themselves in the future.

As Australia’s ICT trade deficit passes $22 billion, the global financial crisis and the high Australian dollar have brought about a decline in Australia’s ICT exports. The trade figures have prompted a call from the Australian Computer Society (ACS) for greater recognition of the ICT sector by governments to help bring about a stronger export performance in coming years.

Listed-Australian IT group, TechnologyOne (ASX: TNE) has had a more than a three-fold increase in revenue, new customers and employees for its Human Resource & Payroll product since releasing reconfigured software three years ago.

There’s continuing growing demand for services in the Australian video communications market, with modest growth taking the total value of the market to $52.6 million last year.

Australia's online general advertising market has apparently regained its pre-global financial crisis optimism, growing this year for the fifth year running and increasing by 11 percent to reach a value of $568 million.

Recent research clearly demonstrates that eBay is in steady decline, with Craigslist picking up all the traffic they're losing.  Meanwhile, Amazon is relying more and more on Christmas sales to boost its coffers.