Market Analysis

Researchers say over half of the service providers participating in a survey have sizeable M2M businesses (ie, providing at least one million M2M connections to customers) and that the automotive/transport/logistics and utility segments together account for nearly half of all M2M connections.

A new report from Juniper Research forecasts that the number of unique consumers accessing cloud-based services will exceed 3.6 billion by 2018, rising from an estimated 2.4bn in 2013. The report highlighted that an expanding collection of connected services within cloud-based storage, music and games will drive consumer demand over the next five years.

Analyst UBS has downgraded Infosys to Sell from Buy, and slashed its price target to $45.77 from $67.44. The firm is worried the IT outsourcing giant isn't as well-positioned as rivals to take advantage of growth opportunities, and is also concerned about its high attrition rate, both of management and staff.

A survey of telcos and carriers shows how they plan to handle the expected boom in wifi connections, and integrate them into payments.

Sales through distribution in Q1 rose in many parts of Europe. The UK did well, but some Nordics were down. Analyst CONTEXT says total IT revenues through distribution stood at €11.6bn, up 7% from the €10.8bn recoded the same time last year. There was growth in all months during the quarter, with January up +4.8%, February up 5.8% and March booming with a 10.2% increase.

Although revenue growth rates for comms service providers (CSPs) is set to remain modest CSPs will continue to invest heavily in their networks, according to Ovum.

As global PC shipments reached just 73.4 million units in the first quarter of 2014, a decline of -4.4% year on year, says IDC, Europe is looking more stable. The global market, though still in decline and with continuing weakness in consumer and emerging market segments, saw preliminary results are slightly better than a projected decline of -5.3%.

Frost & Sullivan thought leaders will present their latest research on ICT: Helping Connected Industries Embrace Big Data Analytics at GIL 2014: Europe, that returns to London for its sixth consecutive year on Wednesday 14th May at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.