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Numbers, Volume 20

The tidyness of my desk is imversly proportional to how busy I am

We don’t “do numbers” here at RedMonk, but I come across several interesting ones each week. Here are some, organized and curated as carefully as all the crap on my desk:

Netbook Shock

60% of netbook purchasers expect them to have the same functionality as notebook computers, according to recent market research by the NPD group. That misperception leads to disappointment; only 58% of purchasers surveyed were very satisfied with their netbooks. 60% of those who bought netbooks said they did so primarily because of the device’s portability, but exactly the same percentage said they never took their netbooks anywhere.

Via Stephen O’Grady.

Adobe Industry Analyst Summit

I’m at the Adobe Industry Analyst Summit this week (see here and here so far for my highlights and commentary), always lots of numbers there:

  • [Adobe] CEO [Shantanu] Narayen: sales of >$50K are the fastest growing segment of the business, including bulk licensing of creative tools (via @billtrippe).
  • Also from Shantanu: “What’s Adobe’s enterprise strategy? It is a $1bn business. the fastest growing part of the business” (via @monkchips).
  • Enterprise Marketing VP John Knightly sees the addressable market for enterprise (LiveCycle?) as $2.8B today (via @billtrippe).
  • Enterprise Marketing VP John Knightly: 250 deals in the last six months, with 25 of those greater than $500K (via @billtrippe).

Smart Profits

Apple and Research in Motion together accounted for approximately 38% of the cellphone industry’s total operating profit in 2008 while only representing 3% of total unit sales. Apple’s share of industry profits clocked in at approximately 20% while holding only just over 1% of the unit market share.

If I read this, it means us consumers are paying a fat margin (over-paying so the company makes more profit) on “smart phones,” hence the creation of so much profit vs. the razor-thin margins on “dumb phones”…right?

China Online

  • The Number of Chinese Netizens increased by over 40 Mil during the first half of 2009, representing a 13.4% growth rate compared to 2008. By June 30 2009 the total number of Chinese Internet Users has reached 338 Million, which represents a penetration rate of 25.5%
  • 320 Mil (or 94.3%) of all online users have broadband access
  • 155 Mil (or 45.9% of all netizens) use their mobile devices to go online. In the first half of 2009 this number increased by 37 Mil. 28% of these Mobile Internet Users are considering to use 3G in the second half of 2009.

The Google Billions

Google made its earnings numbers yesterday, actually coming in above expectations. Total revenues were $5.5 billion, 3 percent above the same period last year and flat with the first quarter (when sequential revenues actually declined). Net revenues, which are the revenues which actually go to Google after they pay off AdSense and AdWords partner sites via traffic acquisition costs (TAC), came in at $4.07 billion.

Windows 7, The Economic Jesus OS

Microsoft has sponsored an IDC report on the economic impact of Windows 7 [pdf]. Among the claims:

  • For every dollar of Microsoft revenue from launch in October 2009 to the end of 2010 from Windows 7, the ecosystem beyond Microsoft will reap $18.52.
  • 19% of the global IT workforce will be working with Windows 7 by the end of 2010
  • IDC expects that employment related to client operating systems will grow by more than 300,000 new jobs or more than 30% of total growth in global IT employment in 2010 solely because of the launch of Windows 7

There is also a forecast that shows Windows 7 taking the majority of Windows client sales in 2010, and which appears to assume that Windows 8 will not be available before 2014.

Meanwhile, Dell seems to like the idea:

“We think a refresh (of hardware sales) is possible in 2010; personal computers will be later than servers and storage,” Michael Dell said. “I think a lot is going to depend on the overall economy and the economic condition for any given company.”

But he added, “We are engaged right now with a lot of companies” that are planning to start replacing their older computers “around the end of the year and going into 2010.”

Analysts using Twitter

200907221031.jpg

From the always interesting Jonny Bentwood &co.

Facebook, Quarter Billion Edition

As of today, 250 million people are using Facebook to stay updated on what’s happening around them and share with the people in their lives.

For comparison, see this chart of AOL subscribers between 2001 and 2008. And, as wikipedia puts it: “[a]t its zenith, AOL’s membership was over 30 million members worldwide.”

Cold Water on dot-whatever-we’re-calling-it Investments

The days of infinite margins, 1,000% productivity gains, and growth of market throughout the universe are long over. Internet companies now should be treated, at best, like utility companies that get bought at about 10 times earnings and sold at 13 times earnings. Even then, I’m not sure I would give the Internet sector the same respect as the monopoly-protected utility sector.

Appcelerator Momentum

[J]ust one month after the beta release of its flagship Appcelerator Titanium platform – it has signed up 3,000 new developers, who are creating a variety of applications for the iPhone and Android mobile devices….

The top three categories in Appcelerator’s pipeline include:

  • Utilities – (15%): including server monitoring, home management, budgeting, and barcode scanning applications
  • Business – (14%): including mobile ports of existing SaaS-based enterprise apps, ERP, CRM, and onsite billing/quoting/invoicing applications
  • Social Networking – (10%): including social aggregation, friend finder, job/employment, and Twitter applications

Jobs in Austin

Austin had 56 job postings per 1,000 residents in the second quarter, making it the fourth healthiest big-city job market in the country, the company said. That was up from a seventh-place ranking in the first quarter.

On a personal, anecdotal note, a handful of tech-world folks I know who’ve been searching for employment have recently found some. Good for them, and I hope that extends to more folks.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as are Microsoft, Dell, and Appcelerator.

Categories: Numbers.