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December 22, 2003
Threats of legal action have cut the number of users of music file-sharing services...
with the result that more Europeans use Kazaa than U.S. citizens, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The number of U.S. Kazaa users fell from 15.7 million in March 2003 to 8.2 million in October, compared to 9.4 million Europeans.
Posted by jenguevin at 06:24 AM
December 18, 2003
Over half of small businesses in North America have Web sites
The sites are primarily used to disseminate information, according to a survey carried out by CI Host. Although price was the main consideration for choosing a hosting solution, 93 percent of companies surveyed said they would avoid free hosting as they would have no recourse if the company caused an error with their site or damaged their online business.
Posted by jenguevin at 01:20 AM
December 15, 2003
Games to top $1B in 2006
Wireless games will be a US$1 billion per year market in the U.S. by 2006, with 65 million users by 2008, according to IDC. That will represent 34.7 percent of U.S. wireless subscribers, up from 7.9 percent today.
Posted by jenguevin at 05:54 PM
December 12, 2003
Few Fortune 1,000 companies actually turning to offshore outsourcing
Contrary to media hype surrounding the issue of US companies moving IT jobs offshore, a recent report by Forrester Research found that few are actually doing so. The study showed that 60% of Fortune 1,000 companies are doing nothing at all with offshore outsourcing, and that 25-30% of companies spend only 1-5% of their total IT services budgets overseas.
For more complete results, view CXO Media's analysis of the report.
Posted by jenguevin at 07:00 PM
December 11, 2003
The number of broadband connections in the UK has reached three million...
according to figures from telco regulator Ofcom. More than 40,000 households and businesses are signing up to high-speed connections every week.
This growth in broadband adoption can in part be attributed to BT's recent rollout of high-speed Internet services. In the middle of November the telco added 2,300 exchanges to its upgrade list, making broadband available to 90 percent of the UK. However, PCAdvisor points out that Ofcom's loose definition of what qualifies as broadband speeds may have skewed these results.
Analysis of the study can be found at PCAdvisor.co.uk.
Posted by jenguevin at 04:11 AM
December 10, 2003
Home PC users put more store on the look and feel of a PC...
than its internal specifications when making buying choices, according to a survey of U.S. home users. Almost two-thirds of users decide to buy on look and feel criteria, with the brand name being most important, following by free extras, the multimedia capability and then price, according to InsightExpress.
Posted by jenguevin at 06:31 AM
December 09, 2003
Cable services will see a strong boost...
in the U.S. next year in the sectors of broadband data (subscriptions to rise 63.2 percent), video on demand (up 49.3 percent) and cable telephony (up 10.8 percent), according to IRG Research. The overall number of subscribers to digital cable services in the U.S. will reach 25.4 million by the fourth quarter of 2004.
Posted by jenguevin at 03:20 AM
December 08, 2003
Messaging has emerged as a leading Web application
Its use often outstrips time spent viewing Web sites, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. In Germany, Yahoo Messenger is in use for an average seven hours per month, and mIRC for four hours. MIRC is also popular in Australia, France, Brazil and Spain, while Microsoft Messenger is the leading messaging application in the U.K. and the most heavily used part of the MSN brand there.
Posted by jenguevin at 06:00 PM
December 04, 2003
Tech budget forecast slips in November
After three steady months of higher budget growth expectations, CIOs reported that IT budgets will grow at 4.2 percent over existing levels in the coming 12 months, according to the 276 executives surveyed in the November CIO Magazine Tech Poll, down from the forecast of 6.0 in October. Complete results available at http://www2.cio.com/techpoll/report/1203_techreport.html.
Posted by jenguevin at 11:52 PM
December 03, 2003
Broadband Internet deployment is surging...
with 12.4 million digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) ports sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2003, 182 percent higher than for the same quarter a year ago. Much of the increase came from shipments to China, and a move to higher-speed platforms in Japan, according to Gartner Inc.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:40 PM
2004 will be the take-off year for mobile data services...
more advanced than SMS (short messaging service), according to Ovum Ltd. Now that a critical mass of terminals -- WiFi-equipped laptops, mobile phones with GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) or CDMA2000 capability -- exists, content and application developers have real motivation to deliver advanced services, and the market will become even more attractive when 3G (third-generation) mobile services take off late in 2004, Ovum said.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:39 PM
The videogame hardware market will be worth US$25.3 billion in 2007...
after a couple of years of flat growth in 2004 and 2005 followed by a new wave of growth in 2006, according to IDC. The extra growth will occur in 2006 as games hardware manufacturers develop a new generation of hardware beyond the 128-bit systems such as Sony Corp.'s Emotion Engine, IDC said.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:39 PM
China's IT market will continue to grow at 23 percent per year until 2006...
when the market will be worth US$85.2 billion, up from $36.4 billion in 2002, according to Zhao Shufeng of Beijing-based CCID Consulting Co. Ltd. Growth in software and services will outpace the currently dominant hardware sector, growing at 27.6 percent and 27.7 percent respectively.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:34 PM