Electronic components demand is soaring

The electronic components' market is the perfect indicator of the High Tech industry trends. After a year of great uncertainty, again new products and gadgets are selling. Thanks for some best sellers as the Apple Ipad that has always a very positive impact on the consumer market and is giving some appetite to other vendors to try to catch a portion of the market. In fact, as the Electronic Components Association is mentioning it, there is also a fear for a shortage in the market. With the emerging countries continuously driving the demand for new cars, new phones and other electronic products, the risk is to see the demand higher than the offer, for a certain time in the next months. At least on that side, the recession seems to be behind us.

Venture capital is slightly back in High Tech sector in the US

Dow Jones just released a report on investments in what we can summarise as the Internet World. After a continuous drop in investments in the Web industry in 2009, 2010 has been a time of recovery. The bottom was reached in Q1 2009 with only about 50 deals concluded. In fact, Q1 2010 was even worse if we take in consideration the value of the money invested with just over $200M. Fortunately enough, Q2 2010 shows an increase in both volume and value. If the number of deal is more important to online communities, the money spent on entertainment is roughly equivalentto the first one. For the last 2 years, online communities have continuously trusted the first place in investments. Everyone is searching for the next Facebook or Twitter. Companies as Foursquare or Gowalla are clearly seen as potential future  with an interesting mix between social and mobile capabilities. Do these startups will bring the ROI expected, it's always hard to say the potential, and we have seen in the past hundreds of promising concepts going nowhere. Today investors are looking very cautiously where they put their money, but we will always see beautiful pitches and plans not giving the expected results. The investors are more than never before asking to theentrepreneurs to have a business model where advertising isn't anymore the only way to create revenue, as they saw too many times the difficulty to attract advertising money in a so crowdy internet world.

Internet trends 2010

To take with you:

 - Internet usage in mobility will become the norm in the future. Already, more than 250M smartphones would be sold in 2010. In 2012, nearly 500M should be sold, against 440M notebooks+desktop PCs. In North America in 2011 and for the years after, more smartphones than classical phones should be shipped. One of the reasons that can explain this progression is the development of 3G networks that work. By 2012, a third of users would have subscribed to a 3G plan, which means having the right device and being able to access the Internet from practically everywhere. The  main usage is remaining search and social networking. Apple is having a great role in this mobile revolution. The introduction of the Ipad is again changing the usage of mobile Internet by providing a new kind of device in between the laptop and the smartphone. Now wireless consumers expect more from their devices, asking for lon lasting batteries and super-fast access. This mobile revolution has created a huge eco-system between the device vendors, the software application companies and the networks. In the same time, the usage itself is becoming more complex, real-time multi-channel communication is becoming a reality. 

- Online advertising should become the new Graal for advertising companies. Today this communication channel remains under utilized. It represents 28% of media consumption for only 13% of advertising spending. Comparing Q1 2008 to Q1 2010, the paid clicks on Google increased by 36% in value to reach $5, 064MM for the quarter (and +34% in volume).- E-Commerce in the US is going back on track after a decrease in beginning of 2009 due to the economic crisis, which has affected traditional commerce in the same way. 

- E-communication is knowing is asecond revolution after the massive usage of the email in the 90's and 00's, social networking users has over passed email users in 2009.

- Cloud computing is becoming the new way to have instant access to data & files instantly, from any computer without having to think too much about losing his work. Security issues, that have been a barrier for a long time to its expansion, have abated as enterprises understand that having data stored locally could also represent a risk.

.

Asia is now leading twitter usage

A A study done by Semiocast is showing a surprising trend regarding the usage of Twitter in the world. 60% of the creation of new accounts is now done outside of the US. It's another element confirming that, even if the domination of US remains strong in terms of internet solutions proposed, the usage itself is clearly going global.