If hardware is the new software, 3-D printers are a big reason. New research holds that even enterprise-class 3-D printers will be affordable enough to be widely deployed within a few years. Read more »
Oracle’s revenue from servers was down 18 percent year over year in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner and IDC. So far, the company’s high-stakes gamble on hardware isn’t paying off. Read more »
New Gartner predictions hold that the U.S. will remain number 1 in overall public cloud services deployment — by a wide margin — into 2016. Read more »
If you build your company’s software on an external platform as a service, what happens when that platform disappears? PHPFog users are finding out. Here’s a cautionary tale. Read more »
Hewlett-Packard’s cloud efforts can get lost in the noise of the company’s bigger “macro” issues, but as the company adds its OpenStack compute cloud to the mix — joining the existing CDN and storage clouds — the battle for enterprise cloud users is on. Read more »
If you think fake online reviews are bad now, just wait a few years. Gartner predicts that in two to three years, 10 to 15 percent of all online reviews will be bought and paid for by businesses. Read more »
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple from around the web that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: Apple-Samsung judge wants CEOs to try to settle, the truth behind smartphone market-share numbers, Office won’t be Retina-ready any time soon, and a refresher on Apple’s patent strategy. Read more »
Techies know how important information technology is to a company’s success. Now new research by Gartner and Forbes seems to indicate that corporate boards have gotten that message as well, with board members ranking IT improvement as highly as boosting sales. Read more »
To deal with the BYOD wave, Gartner recommends that companies roll out mobile data protection, mobile device management and fund special mobility strategy teams within IT to handle the issue. IT folks would likely welcome that, but won’t hold their breath. Read more »
A new Gartner list of cloud computing trends shows how nervous the burgeoning use of cloud makes IT departments, which traditionally controlled what applications and data ran and on what devices. That’s all changed and now IT has to change too. Read more »
In two years’ time, your personal cloud will replace your PC as your go-to computing resource, according to Gartner research. The prevailing wisdom is that the desktop and laptop PC — or any non-smartphone, non-tablet device — is headed for the dustbin of history. Read more »
In what is probably not a shocker, new research shows more companies are turning to SaaS-based business intelligence over traditional on-premises BI. About a third of IT managers surveyed said they plan to use at least some SaaS-based BI in the next year. Read more »
Apple sold a little over 2 million Macs between October and the end of December, according to IDC. That’s 18 percent more than the same quarter a year ago. It’s really good news for Apple, as that growth has put its market share at 10.92 percent of the U.S. PC market, its highest share in a very long time. Read more »
Analyst powerhouses IDC and Gartner both rolled out their latest cloud computing and big data predictions and statistics Thursday morning, and while some are bold, others should have you saying “Duh.” Here’s what they have to say, and how that squares with what I’m seeing. Read more »
Android may have some shortcomings, but Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has made enormous advances with manufacturers in terms of getting its OS on thei… Read more at paidContent »
PC shipments were down in Western Europe, dropping over 11 percent during the third quarter of 2011 vs. the same period a year ago, according to Gartner. But Apple bucked the trend and saw a nearly 20 percent increase in shipments year over year. Read more »
Smartphones were up 74 percent in the second quarter of 2011, accounting for a fourth of all mobile device sales, versus just 17 percent last year. The companies benefiting most from increasing smartphone sales are clearly Apple and Google, but which is benefitting the most? Read more »
According to Gartner, mobile phone sales for the first quarter totaled some 428 million devices, with just 23 percent being smartphones. With so much room to grow, there would appear to be room for many competitors, but an expansive market is still a finite one. Read more »
The Gartner Magic Quadrant has been called out for some serious wrongdoings, but by not including Amazon Web Services among the leaders in its Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting, Gartner just flat got it wrong. Read more »
Gartner last year said Android wouldn’t be the No. 2 operating system in the world until 2012, but the future has come early: the platform grabbed 25.5 percent of the market in the third quarter, up from 3.5 percent a year ago, moving into second place. Read more »
Gartner research analysts recently convened to discuss the changing nature of work and table some predictions for the coming decade. Their consensus view was that distributed and ad-hoc teams of people, along with blurred organizational boundaries, would become the norm for most modes of work. Read more »
Mobile voice and data revenues will create a trillion-dollar global market by 2014, as complementary products such as advertising, applications and web services are built, says research firm Gartner. Broadband has enabled mobility to this point, but location is the next big driver. Read more »
Both Gartner and IDC report the Mac is now accounting for a tenth of the PC market in the U.S., but these preliminary numbers will likely climb higher still when Apple reports actual Mac sales during its quarterly conference call next week. Read more »
We came back from the holiday weekend to a lot of predictions about the future of infrastructure and cloud opportunities, including a prediction on data warehousing being the next hot trend in storage, the latest version of Gartner’s cloud hype cycle and how Hurd-gate will impact Oracle. Read more »
While corporations can learn from web workers, I think that the reverse is also true. As someone who has worked recently on both sides of the fence, I thought it would be interesting to think about what web workers can learn from corporations. Read more »
The lonelygirl15 web series franchise has always drawn its success from its fans. But ever since its original creators changed their focus to branded content over original, that has literally been the case thanks to The Show is Yours project, which allowed members of the community […] Read more »
If 2009 was the year that the smart grid became a hot buzz word and utilities first started to look into energy management devices for their customers, 2010 will be all about how to tackle the emergence of the consumer energy management market. If you need […] Read more »
For Q3 2009, Apple’s iPhone accounted for 17.1 percent of worldwide smartphone marketshare, a new high for the company. That’s the good news from Gartner, and there’s more where that came from. While overall mobile phone sales were flat for the quarter, smartphone sales were up […] Read more »
Social networking has generally been discouraged in the workplace, with many corporate IT departments blocking access to sites like Facebook and MySpace due to privacy concerns. But these efforts are becoming increasingly futile as our lives continue to converge with social networks, analysts at a Gartner […] Read more »
The good news is that preliminary estimates from both IDC and Gartner for the third quarter have Mac sales up and Apple ranked fourth in overall PC sales. The potentially bad news is that Apple will probably drop in ranking next quarter due to the increasing […] Read more »
There are two strategies that new electric-vehicle makers commonly use to enter the market with ambitions to go mainstream: start at the high end and move lower, or aim at a niche market that requires less performance and shift to the center. While startups like Tesla […] Read more »
I am getting so much good stuff out of the Palm Pre Homebrew Apps Catalog that I find myself checking it even before I check the official Pre App Catalog. The homebrew catalog is growing by leaps and bounds, and it’s a better use of my […] Read more »
Gartner reports that while mobile phone sales are down in the second quarter of 2009, smartphone sales are up, and the iPhone is way up. While worldwide sales of mobile phones declined six percent to 286 million units for the second quarter, 40 million smartphones were […] Read more »
While second-quarter mobile phone sales fell 6 percent from the same period last year, sales of smartphones surged 27 percent, according to new a Gartner report, making it the fastest-growing mobile devices category. On a sequential basis, Nokia, Samsung and LG — the top three handset […] Read more »
Depending upon which research firm you believe, preliminary estimates for Mac sales are either down or flat for the second quarter compared to last year. Either way, the netbook, or lack thereof, appears to be the problem for Apple. From the Associated Press, IDC analyst Bob […] Read more »
Who is using the cloud, and how, has been a hot topic for some time, but getting any reliable numbers is no easy feat. That’s why I view the latest cloud computing adoption predictions by Forrester and Gartner with a skeptical ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
I’ve always been of the belief that a memorial service is not for the person who passed away, but for those left behind. Which is why I don’t think there’s anything wrong with today’s epic celebration of Michael Jackson’s life and work; it’s been almost two […] Read more »
Electric utilities are increasingly offering energy-efficiency programs, but there’s a good chance their customers don’t know about them. That’s according to a survey by market research firm Gartner that found that while the vast majority of respondents said they were willing to participate in programs that […] Read more »
Gartner said today it expects chip sales to drop by 24 percent in 2009 — an unwelcome revision to its previous forecast of a 16 percent drop issued in December. Back in November, when the sky started falling, it had expected (hoped for?) a slim 1 […] Read more »