IDC Worldwide Enterprise Videoconferencing and Telepresence Equipment QView showed positive results in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16) with overall videoconferencing equipment revenue increasing both 7.4% quarter over quarter and 6.1% year over year. Total worldwide enterprise video equipment market revenue in 3Q16 was over $542 million, up from just over $505 million in 2Q16.

IMRG, supported by SimilarWeb data, estimates that total spend on online retail sites on Christmas Day will reach £805m, a 10.1% increase on the £728m spent on the same day in 2015. Boxing Day is also estimated to get close to being a billion-pound online shopping day, with total spend forecast to hit £984m, a 15% increase on Boxing Day 2015.

Christmas is just around the corner and e-commerce sales are expected to hit the highest milestone ever. As a market researcher eMarketer predicts, online revenues in the US will reach more than $94.71 billion over the Christmas holiday. During the core holiday shopping period of November and December 2016, UK retail e-commerce sales will reach an estimated £16.90 billion ($28.83 billion) and 20.3% of all holiday season retail sales.

The abandonment rate of smartwatches is 29 percent, and 30 percent for fitness trackers, because people do not find them useful, they get bored of them or they break, according to a survey by Gartner. "Dropout from device usage is a serious problem for the industry," said Angela McIntyre, research director at Gartner.

eMarketer updated its estimates for digital video use in Western Europe, predicting that more than seven in 10 internet users will be digital video users by 2020. For 2016, eMarketer estimates that 211.6 million internet users in Western Europe will watch digital video at least once a month. That works out to 66.9% of all internet users.

The total addressable market for drone powered business operations is valued at over $127 bn, according to PwC estimates. The industry with the largest potential market for the commercial applications of drone technology is infrastructure, with an estimated addressable market value of $45.2 bn.

Total EMEA external storage systems revenue fell 5.1% year over year to $1.49 billion in the third quarter of 2016, according to the International Data Corporation EMEA Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker 3Q16. The flash market recorded huge growth, with all-flash systems growing 76.4% annually and hybrid flash arrays growing 3.5% YoY.

Fitbit, the market leader in wearables best-known for its fitness tracking armbands, is reportedly about to acquire smartwatch maker Pebble in a transaction valued between $34 and $40 million, VentureBeat reports. Pebble came to fame as the company behind the most funded Kickstarter campaign of all time in 2012.

For more than a decade I was questioning myself, why do people need a gun, sunglasses and hoodies to rob the bank. As an operational risk management expert, while assessing business process and IT operations security I keep finding same vulnerabilities. This time, I decided to exploit one and get some cash from the bank as evidence.

The IDC study, Western Europe Vertical Markets IT Spending Forecast, 2016–2020, shows that the IT market was off to a promising start at the beginning of 2016 after a relatively strong 2015, and most countries in the region seemed to be finally leaving the economic downturn behind.However, a sudden slowdown in economic activity and IT investments started to materialize in the second quarter, and this worsened during the rest of the year.

Contrary to popular belief and what the amount of media coverage might suggest, the smartphone market is about much more than just Apple and Samsung. While these two companies are still market leaders, their combined market share amounted to no more than 32.5 percent in the third quarter of 2016, the lowest it has been in more than five years.

By 2019, more than one-quarter of the world’s population will be using mobile messaging apps, according to eMarketer’s new forecast. Mobile phone messaging apps will be used by more than 1.4 billion people in 2016, an increase of almost 16%.

Next year will mark a major milestone for media consumption in France. According to eMarketer’s latest forecast of time spent with media, the average adult will spend more time with digital media per day than TV, a first for that country. Also next year, time spent with mobile devices will surpass desktop and laptop time.

The worldwide Ethernet switch market (Layer 2/3) recorded $6.29 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), an increase of 2.0% year over year. Meanwhile, the worldwide total enterprise and service provider (SP) router market finished at $3.56 billion in revenue in 3Q16, increasing 2.6% on a year over year basis. These growth rates are according to results published in the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and Worldwide Quarterly Router Tracker.

Nine studies from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) shows that on average 7.4% of legitimate sales of corresponding sectors known to be vulnerable to IP infringers are lost each year in the 28 Member states due to counterfeiting as well as piracy also in the sector of recorded music. The damages amount to € 83 billion in total, out of which €48 billion are directly lost by these sectors.

The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments increased 1.8% year over year in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), and increased 6.7% on a sequential basis to finish at $2.47 billion. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker, the enterprise segment grew 8.4% year over year in 3Q16 to finish at $1.45 billion, the second consecutive quarter of strong growth. The sustained growth observed so far in 2016 can be attributed to refresh cycles and the funding of digital transformation initiatives in many enterprises.

Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market declined 7.0% year over year to $12.5 billion in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), according to new IDC report. Overall server market growth had recently slowed in part due to a slowdown in hyperscale datacenter growth and continued drag from declining high-end server sales. In addition, the robust enterprise refresh cycle of 2015 has created difficult comparisons in 2016 to the prior year's quarterly results.

Mobile device adoption in the workplace is not yet mature, found a recent survey from Gartner. Although 80 percent of workers surveyed received one or more corporate-issued devices, desktops are still the most popular corporate device among businesses, with more than half of workers receiving corporate-issued desktop PCs. The survey findings are based on the 2016 Gartner Personal Technologies Study, which was conducted from June to August 2016 among 9,592 respondents in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

Worldwide tablet shipments are expected to decline by 12% in 2016, rounding out the year at 182.3 million shipments, according to a new forecast from the IDC. An analyst expects the market will rebound in 2018 though growth will remain in the low single digits as detachable tablets slowly gain traction.

In the third quarter of 2016, the Western European Technical Consumer Goods market contracted by 2.4 percent, compared to the same quarter in 2015., according to GfK. The market was heavily affected by the GBP/Euro exchange rate. There were sales value increases in the major domestic appliances, small domestic appliances and telecommunications sectors. All other sectors declined in value. The TCG market in Western Europe in Q3 2016 generated revenue of €49.7 billion.

Worldwide PC shipments are forecast to decline by 6.4% year over year in 2016, according to an updated forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. This is an improvement over August's projection for a decline of 7.2% in 2016. While IDC's outlook for 2017 remains at -2.1% year-over-year growth, the absolute volumes are slightly higher based on stronger 2016 shipments.

Futuresource has recently published the latest findings from the 6th wave of Kids Tech. Its consumer research programme specifically focused on children aged 3 through to 16 across USA, UK, Germany & China, providing ongoing monitoring of their digital media consumption and its influence on their habits and interests.

In the third quarter of 2016, worldwide server revenue declined 5.8 percent year over year, and shipments declined 2.6 percent from the third quarter of 2015, according to Gartner. Among the top five vendors, only Cisco increased revenue in the third quarter, while Huawei and Inspur Electronics saw growth in shipments. HPE, Dell and Lenovo all experienced declines in both revenue and shipments.

Worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to reach 1.45 billion units with a year-over-year growth rate of 0.6% in 2016 according to the latest forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. Although growth remains positive, it is down significantly from the 10.4% growth in 2015.

Cyber Monday barely retained its status as the biggest online spending day of the year after a surge of shoppers hit computers and phones instead of stores on Black Friday to chase deals earlier in the season, according to Bloomberg. Online spending rose 12 percent to a record $3.45 billion, according to Adobe. Black Friday almost caught up, with $3.34 billion spent online, a gain of 21.6 percent from a year ago and another record.

Smart smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, wireless doorbell cameras, and keyless entry are among the top 10 smart home technologies for homeowners age 50 and older, according to new research from The Hartford and the MIT AgeLab.

After a 2% decline in worldwide TV shipments last year, 2016 is showing signs of a turnaround, with the market flattening out to end the year on 225 million units, achieving a value of $86 billion according to a new report from Futuresource Consulting.

The first Worldwide Semiannual Small and Medium Business Spending Guide from IDCforecasts small and medium businesses (with less than 1,000 employees) will spend $564 billion on IT hardware, software, and services, including business services, in 2016. This amount is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 4.2%, reaching $668 billion in 2020. The new spending guide expands on IDC's previous small and medium business forecasts by offering greater detail on spending by technology, company size, and geography.

According to figures published by IDC, 8.2 million tablets were shipped into Western Europe in 3Q16, for a 6.7% decline YoY. The main trends in the quarter were the ongoing expansion of detachables and the penetration of tablets in the commercial segment.

The decades-old retail tradition known as Black Friday suffered another blow this week after early deals and online shopping robbed the event of many brick-and-mortar customers, according to Bloomberg. E-commerce orders surged on Thanksgiving, the day before Black Friday, eliminating the need for shoppers to wait in long lines and fight for deals at physical shops. For consumers who did want to visit shopping centers, many stores were offering deals on Thursday evening.