Posted 10/28/09 at 01:35:31 PM by Paul Lilly

At nearly 10 percent, the unemployment rate is the highest it's been in 26 years, or a little over a quarter of a century. Nevertheless, SMBs are looking to the coming year with optimism and planning to hire rather than lay off more workers, suggests a new study.

Intuit Payroll pinged over 1,000 SMB owners and found that 44 percent have plans to hire in the next year, and 60 percent are expecting their businesses to grow. But there's also a bit of a quandary SMBs find themselves in.

Nearly 90 percent of the survey participants indicated health insurance benefits as key to attracting and retaining good employees, but 58 percent don't offer healthcare benefits, with nearly half saying they simply can't afford it.

"There's a wideing gap of expectations," said Nora Denzel, senior vice president of Intuit's Employee Management Solutions Division. "On one hand, we as a society assume that health and retirement benefits are part of every employee's compensation package. And yet even as these small businesses gear up to hire, according to our results, small businesses are leery about what those benefits will cost."

Intuit also found that only 1 percent of respondents reported receiving federal stimulus money, even though 74 percent admit that they are probably not taking advantage of all the benefits made available to them under the federal economic stimulus plan.

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Posted 09/06/09 at 04:14:59 PM by Justin Kerr

Avid bookworms will swear by their Kindles, but according to a new study released on Wednesday, e-readers will likely never go main stream as long as the price hovers around the current $199-$489 range. "The price points for how most consumers value e-readers is shockingly low -- for most segments, between $50 and $99," Rotman Epps said. "To reach the largest market possible, the prices will need to come way down." Currently the biggest obstacle to hitting the $50 price is the e-ink display itself which costs roughly $60 all on its own. Device makers can be expected to "look for alternative providers of displays if E Ink can't bring its prices down fast enough," Rotman Epps said.

Everything comes down in price over time, but to see the kind of growth that most companies expect, analysts expect e-reader manufactures to explore subsidy based business models, partnering with either network providers, or newspapers to help offset the cost of the device. Rotman Epps said its "a reasonable assumption" that network operators and newspapers will only subsidize e-readers if they can recover their costs by enticing consumers to sign up for long-term data plans that command monthly fees. "

The survey estimated that approximately two million e-readers will be sold in 2009 at current prices, bringing the total install base up to about three million by the end of the year. Forrester also estimates that this only represents about 12 percent of the maximum addressable market at the $199 price point.

What would you pay?

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Posted 08/21/09 at 03:47:34 PM by Paul Lilly

As the back to school shopping season kicks into high gear, look for OEMs to push PCs with product bundles and all kinds of enticing offers. For Apple, that might mean once again bundling an iPod with the purchase of a new Mac or MacBook, but that might not be enough. According to a new study by consumer electronics site Retrovo, college-bound students are less willing than ever to pay the so-called "Apple Tax" by purchasing a pricier Mac.

"While Apple has done well historically in the education market, 2009 marks the dawn of the netbook," says Vipin Jain, Retrevo CEO. "Students told us they wanted longer battery life, smaller size, and a lighter laptop. 58 percent of them plan on spending less than $750. Only 18 percent have a budget over $1,000."

It also isn't helping Apple's cause that "retailers are working overtime to attract students," such as Wal-Mart expanding its laptop selection by 40 percent and partnering with HP to make a sub-$300 Compaq Presario.

But take the survey with a grain of salt. While respondents were selected from a random sampling of Retrevo's 4 million monthly visitors, the sample size was only 300.

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Posted 08/19/09 at 09:26:04 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Many financial savants grabbed their crystal balls and went into hiding when the economy went into freefall. Now that there are signs of recovery, they are again gazing into their crystal balls with renewed hope. According to many of them, including IMF’s chief economist Olivier Blanchard, the recession is behind us.

Tech honchos now believe that the IT industry would lead the recovery. According to a survey conducted by KPMG, two thirds of the 130 CEOs that were surveyed believe the IT industry would recover quicker than the US economy. Furthermore, a vast majority of CEOs feel 2010 would bring glad tidings for their industry. One can expect lesser job cuts in the near future as more than two thirds of tech bosses are not too keen on cost cutting.

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Posted 08/17/09 at 01:10:04 PM by Paul Lilly

Perception is a funny thing. If you listen to Microsoft, Vista, despite its acknowledged shortcomings, has been a success story and the company has the sales numbers to prove it. But talk to the end users and you'll hear a very different opinion. The negative perception towards Vista remains so strong that thousands of XP users have continued to make do with a nearly decade old OS.

The good news for Microsoft is that those same users don't hold the same disdain for Windows 7 as they do for Vista, according to a survey conducted by PC World and Technologizer.com. The survey pinged nearly 5,000 Windows XP users to find out how they feel about their current OS, why they haven't moved to Vista, and what their thoughts are regarding Windows 7.

Over 25 percent of the respondents said they continue to use XP because Vista doesn't justify an upgrade, and out of those who have used Vista, over half indicated somewhat negative or very negative feelings towards it. Of those who have never touched Vista, about 80 percent said they have somewhat negative or very negative feelings towards the OS.

Those opinions haven't soured the perception of Windows 7. Out of those who have had a chance to play with a beta or RC of the upcoming OS, over 65 percent said they felt very positive or somewhat positive with their experience, and only about 10 percent reported feeling negative.

More survey results here.

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Posted 07/23/09 at 01:00:42 PM by Paul Lilly

According to a survey conducted by the Internet and American Life Project of the Pew Research Center, the stereotype of a middle-aged white guy hammering out Internet addresses on his smartphone might not be accurate. Of the 2,253 Americans interviewed, African Americans represented the largest increase of those who access the Internet via a mobile phone.

"The typical early adopter of a dozen years ago was a white guy in his mid- to late thirties," said John Horrigan, associate director of the Pew Internet Project and principal author on the report. "Now you see the cutting edge in mobile Internet being populated by younger people of color."

Almost half of all African-American and English-speaking Hispanics reported using mobile phones or other hand-held devices to hop around the web or fire off emails, whereas just 28 percent of white Americans reported accessing the Internet with a mobile gadget.

According to Horrigan, the shift could lead to a new wave of mobile development "to serve a population that is much more diverse than a dozen years ago in wire-line access."

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Posted 06/01/09 at 09:32:37 AM by Paul Lilly

With all the media coverage and celebrity reception, you'd think the whole world was Twittering by now (we certainly are!). But surprisingly, a new survey suggests the social networking phenomenon has yet to catch on among the 18- to 24-year-old crowd who also have profiles on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

"Twitter dominates the news, but clearly we're only touching the surface of its potential as a marketing vehicle," Participatory Media Network co-founder and chairman Michael Della Penna said in a release. "This is a classic 'glass half full' scenario for Twitter because it's clear that Gen Y has an appetite for social networking, but still hasn't fully embraced micro-blogging. There is a tremendous opportunity now for marketers to develop strategies to get this important group active on Twitter too."

Conducted by Pace University and the Participatory Media Network, the survey pinged the young age group and found that all but 1 percent had a profile on a social networking site. However, only 22 percent said they use Twitter. Of those who said they do use Twitter, the survey showed that 85 percent of them follow friends, a little over half keep tabs on celebrities, and 29 percent follow family members and companies.

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Posted 05/24/09 at 12:20:48 PM by Justin Kerr

New research from NPD and Nielsens reveals some fairly interesting information on how Americans spend their free time, and the results might surprise you. On the gaming front, 63 percent of Americans reported having played some form of video game within the past six months, while only 43 per cent admitted to having gone to see a movie in the theatre. This bodes well for the gaming industry which reported that consumers now spend roughly one third of their entertainment budget on games, which equates to about $38 per person per month on average for content.

On the video front, Neilsen has released a separate study that shows online video might not be as big a threat as the major TV networks are letting on. Despite the rapid rise in online video viewing, consumers on average only watched about three hours per month via the Internet. That is up an hour from the results last year, but still only represents about 1.1 percent of total video consumption, which is totally dominated by traditional TV.

The other interesting statistic is that when it comes to video, apparently we are now watching more TV than ever before. The average American now consumes about 153.5 hours of TV per month, which works out to over 5 hours per day. This study excludes non-legitimate video sources such as peer to peer networks, but includes numbers pulled from Hulu, You Tube, and many other online video sites. Want to read the whole study? Click the link to read the whole report.

So how do you spend your spare time?

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