Forrester

Marketers rethinking social media

Marketers have become more realistic about how to best engage their audiences, according to the results of a new IBM survey.

The State of Marketing 2011 report presented today at a marketing event in Boston covered nearly 300 online and direct marketers across a wide range of industries, geographies, and company sizes. Results reveal that marketers have become more practical about their expectations for both mobile and social marketing, as well as the realization that their efforts are strongly tied to IT, especially when it comes to making marketing campaigns actionable for the end-user.

From the survey results:

More than … Read more

Can any tablet challenge the iPad?

As the iPad juggernaut continues with today's launch of the iPad 2, can any other tablet maker truly compete with Apple?

The odds seem to be against it, at least according to the results of a survey released yesterday by ChangeWave Research. Questioning more than 3,000 consumers last month, ChangeWave found that 27 percent of them plan to buy a tablet, 2 percentage points more than a similar poll found last November.

Among those eyeing a tablet, 82 percent said they'll opt for an iPad. That number compares with 4 percent looking into a Motorola Xoom, 3 … Read more

Tablet sales expected to explode through 2015

Forrester Research has more than doubled its long-term sales forecast for tablets to reflect consumer demand.

About 10.3 million tablets were sold in the U.S. last year, the market researcherestimates. It expects sales to more than double this year to 24.1 million units. From there, sales growth will gradually start to plateau with 35.1 million units, 39.8 million units, and 42.3 million units sold in 2012, 2013, and 2014, respectively. Tablet makers will sell 44 million units in 2015, the researcher predicts.

As recently as June, Forrester was predicting tablet sales to reach … Read more

Survey: Internet ties with TV for popularity

The Internet finally seems to be as popular as TV, according to a study released yesterday by Forrester.

Based on a survey, the research firm's report found that people in the U.S. on average spend around 13 hours a week online, the same amount of time they spend watching TV.

As usual, the results vary by age. People ages 18 to 30 have been spending more time on the Internet than watching TV for awhile. But this marks the first Forrester study in which folks in the 32 to 44 group also are online more than they are … Read more

E-book sales to hit almost $1 billion this year

Although e-book buying is still a niche market, those people who like their books electronic are spending lots of money.

This year, U.S. consumers will have spent $966 million on e-books, according to a report released yesterday by Forrester. By 2015, e-books will be close to a $3 billion market, projects the research firm.

Most of the 4,000 people questioned by Forrester for a recent survey still get their books the old-fashioned way, either borrowing them from a friend or taking them out from the library. Only 7 percent of the people polled read e-books, according to a … Read more

Report: Tablets to outsell Netbooks in two years

Driven by the allure of the iPad, tablet PCs will surpass Netbooks in sales in just two years, according to a report released Thursday by Forrester Research.

In the U.S. alone, the burgeoning tablet industry is expected to sell 20.4 million units in 2015 compared with just 3.5 million this year, a compound annual growth rate of 42 percent, says Forrester's report "The U.S. Consumer PC Market in 2015." By 2014, more people will use tablets than Netbooks, and by 2015, tablets will make up 23 percent of all PC sales, forecasts Forrester.… Read more

Analyst: New developer demographics favor Linux, PHP

COLUMBIA, S.C.--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might agree with The Who that "the kids are alright," but he's unlikely to appreciate their changing taste in programming languages and operating systems. But then, neither will Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

After all, according to at the Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond, speaking here Thursday at the 2010 Palmetto Open Source Conference, the rising generation of developers are more familiar with Ruby and PHP than Java or .Net, and increasingly opt to develop and deploy enterprise and Web applications on Linux rather than Windows or Unix.

The beginning of the … Read more

U.S. tech industry in recovery mode

Emerging from a rough 2009, the technology industry has begun to recover, says a new report from Forrester.

The $741 billion U.S. IT market is now expected to see an 8.4 percent rise in spending this year, according to Forrester's latest "U.S. and Global IT Market Outlook: Q1 2010," released Thursday. The rebound will be more subdued but still solid for the global tech market, now forecast to grow 7.7 percent in U.S. dollars for 2010.

The latest estimate for growth in U.S. tech outshines Forrester's January forecast of 6.… Read more

Security driven by compliance, rather than protection

A new report by Forrester Research, commissioned by Microsoft and RSA, the security division of EMC, found that even though corporate intellectual property comprises 62 percent of a given company's data assets, security programs are focused on compliance rather than data protection.

The report highlights a number of key findings, that provide a number of things to think about if you are remotely involved in the security of corporate data:

Secrets comprise two-thirds of the value of firms' information portfolios Compliance, not security, drives security budgets Firms focus on preventing accidents, but theft is where the money is The more valuable a firm's information, the more incidents it will have CISOs do not know how effective their security controls actually are

According to Forrester, corporate security programs are typically divided into two main categories of data types to protect: secrets and custodial data.

Secrets--that can confer long-term competitive advantage such as product plans, earnings forecasts, and trade secrets.

Secrets refer to information that the enterprise creates and wishes to keep under wraps. Secrets tend to be messily and abstractly described in Word documents, embedded in presentations, and enshrined in application-specific formats like CAD.

Custodial data--which includes customer, medical, and payment card information that becomes "toxic" when spilled or stolen.

Custodial data has little intrinsic value in and of itself. But when it is obtained by an unauthorized party, misused, lost, or stolen, it changes state. Data that is ordinarily benign transforms into something harmful. When custodial data is spilled, it becomes "toxic" and poisons the enterprise's air in terms of press headlines, fines, and customer complaints. Outsiders, such as organized criminals, value custodial data because they can make money with it. Custodial data also accrues indirect value to the enterprise based on the costs of fines, lawsuits, and adverse publicity.

Forrester notes that while toxic data spills are both dramatic and expensive, secrets are actually much more valuable and are an "underappreciated and underprotected information asset." … Read more