gartner

Global sales of mobile phones dipped slightly in 2009 overall but did stage a fourth-quarter recovery, according to new figures from Gartner.

Last year, consumers worldwide bought 1.21 billion cell phones, a 0.9 percent decline from the prior year. However, a surge in smartphones from the likes of Apple and Research In Motion and in low-end devices boosted fourth-quarter sales to 340 million units, an 8.3 percent gain over the fourth quarter of 2008, the market researcher said Tuesday.

Selling prices also took a hit last year. Intense competition forced cell phone manufacturers to keep prices low, … Read more

The conventional wisdom is that scarcity makes a product worth buying.

Whether in software development or software analysis, the thinking goes that making your products freely available extinguishes the desire to buy it.

It's a great thought. Unfortunately, it's not true--at least, not to the extent that its proponents would like.

Take Forrester. The venerable analyst firm has decided to stop letting analysts maintain personal blogs and instead to aggregate their blogs on Forrester.com. The content will still be free and viewable by anyone.

In and of itself, this isn't particularly controversial. However, the aggregation will … Read more

Analyst firm Gartner is out with five predictions for social software, the net of which shows that social media functions will both succeed and fail in the enterprise.

Gartner believes that social services will be embraced, but perhaps not in the way we thought they would. In boiling down the various social mediums into mechanics such as interpersonal communications or performance analysis, it becomes a bit clearer how these services will be adopted in the enterprise. It also gives a glimpse into areas start-ups can target to solve business problems.

Gartner's five social software predictions for 2010 and beyond: … Read more

IT spending around the world will rise 4.6 percent this year to reach $3.4 trillion, according to research released Thursday by Gartner.

Though modest, the growth will show much needed improvement over last year when spending actually dipped 4.6 percent from 2008. Gains are expected to hit all major segments of the IT market, including hardware, software, IT services, and telecommunications. This latest forecast is also higher than Gartner's previous prediction from last quarter when the firm said it didn't expect IT spending to hit 2008 levels until 2011.

Around the world, a recovery in … Read more

CIOs are eyeing relatively flat IT budgets this year, but that's better news than last year when spending took a nosedive.

IT budgets will rise on average only about 1.3 percent this year compared with last year, though that marks a halt to 2009's recession when spending dropped by 8.1 percent, says a Gartner CIO survey released Tuesday. The research firm's report "Leading in Times of Transition: The 2010 CIO Agenda" questioned almost 1,600 chief information officers, all of whom saw 2009 as their most challenging year in a decade.

This year'… Read more

Mobile app stores are likely to get a lot busier this year.

Smartphone consumers will spend $6.2 billion on mobile apps in 2010, forecasts Gartner in a recent report, generating ad revenue of around $0.6 billion throughout the world. Downloads will also skyrocket, exceeding 4.5 billion this year. But good news for app users--82 percent of all apps downloaded will be free.

Last year, mobile app stores kicked up sales of more than $4.2 billion, which includes paid apps bought by consumers and ad-sponsored free apps. On the horizon, Gartner predicts mobile app downloads will shoot … Read more

Gazing into the future with Gartner, what can we expect in the world of tech?

The research firm recently revealed its forecast for 2010 and beyond, envisioning a world where more of us live and breathe online and more often through our smartphones than our PCs.

Although the predictions target Gartner's corporate clients, most will certainly affect smaller businesses and consumers too.

"As organizations make plans to navigate the economic recovery and prepare for the return to growth, our predictions for 2010 focus on the impact of critical changes in the balance of control and power in IT,&… Read more

IBM is expected to announce on Thursday the largest enterprise cloud computing deployment to date as Panasonic begins a migration off Microsoft Exchange to IBM's LotusLive cloud service. More than 100,000 employees will participate in the initial migration effort expanding to a total of more than 300,000 employees and external partners globally.

This is significant not just for the scale but also because a large, conservative company like Panasonic is moving full-on into the cloud. It's also important because this deployment replaces Microsoft Exchange and furthers IBM's leadership role in enterprise-targeted cloud services.

For the … Read more

The semiconductor industry is set to post a revenue drop of $29 billion for this year, according to research firm Gartner.

Worldwide revenue for 2009 totaled $226 billion, down 11.4 percent from 2008, the company said in a research report published on Thursday. It marks only the sixth time in 25 years that the semiconductor industry has posted an annual decline, and is the first time it has seen a drop for two years in a row, according to Gartner.

While revenue fell sharply at the beginning of 2009, carrying on a fall prompted by the economic recession the … Read more