Microsoft’s second-quarter sales and profit exceeded analysts’ projections, bolstered by rising customer sign-ups for cloud-based services and a stabilizing personal-computer market, according to Bloomberg. Profit excluding certain items, such as a few weeks of results from newly acquired LinkedIn, was 84 cents a share on adjusted sales of $25.8 billion.

Consumer confidence is starting 2017 on an extremely positive note, GfK Consumer Climate Study for Germany shows. Both economic and income expectations as well as propensity to buy have improved. The overall consumer climate indicator is forecasting 10.2 points for February 2017, following 9.9 points in January.

Over half of smartphone users spend no money on smartphone apps (paid-for downloads and in-app transactions), according to a new survey by Gartner. However, end-user spending on in-app transactions continues to rise.

IDC recently launched its newest Tracker research program focusing on the emerging Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) headset market. The first data published by the Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker focuses on OEM market sizing in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16) and covers a wide range of products, technologies, form factors, and geographies.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $364.1 billion in 2017, an increase of 7.2 percent from 2016, according to Gartner. This represents a complete turnaround for the semiconductor industry as the market experienced 1.5 percent growth in 2016.

Traditional PC shipments in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) stabilized in the fourth quarter of 2016, registering a close-to-zero decline (-0.2% YoY) and reaching 20.7 million units, according to IDC. Notebooks performed well across all EMEA regions (2.9% YoY), growing 2.7% in Western Europe and 3.3% in CEMA.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $339.7 billion in 2016, a 1.5 percent increase from 2015 revenue of $334.8 billion, according to preliminary results by Gartner. The top 25 semiconductor vendors' combined revenue increased by 7.9 percent compared with 2015, and accounted for 75.9 percent of the market.

Worldwide purchases of 3D printers, materials, software, and related services are expected to total $13.2 billion in 2016. According to a recent update to the Worldwide Semiannual 3D Printing Spending Guide from IDC, global spending on 3D printing will experience a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.3% with revenues reaching $28.9 billion in 2020.

China’s impact on the global semiconductor industry continued on an upward trend in 2015, with chip consumption and production revenues increasing at a greater rate than worldwide revenues. According to PwC’s 2016 update to its annual report, China’s impact on the semiconductor industry, China’s share of the consumption market increased by 5.9% in 2015 to 58.5% of the worldwide total, marking a new record.

Worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) is forecast to reach $737 billion in 2016 as organizations invest in the hardware, software, services, and connectivity that enable the IoT. According to a new update to the IDC Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide, global IoT spending will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6% over the 2015-2020 forecast period, reaching $1.29 trillion in 2020.

According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 8.1% year over year to $8.4 billion in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16). Ethernet switch continues to be the growth leader, as the market awaits new hyperscale datacenter builds to spur additional growth.

Sweden climbed to No. 2 and Finland cracked into the top five of the 2017 Bloomberg Innovation Index, which scores economies using factors including research and development spending and the concentration of high-tech public companies.

According to the IDC WW Quarterly Cloud Infrastructure Tracker, IT infrastructure spending (server, disk storage, and Ethernet switch) for public and private cloud in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) grew 19.5% year on year to reach $1.5 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2016.

Chinese smartphone and tablet maker Huawei revealed its expected 2016 annual performance figures. For 2016, they predict sales revenue of 178 billion CYN, 42% up from a year ago, achieving steady revenue growth for the fifth consecutive year.

According to a new forecast from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, total spending on IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches) for deployment in cloud environments will increase by 18.2% in 2017 to reach $44.2 billion. Of this amount, the majority (61.2%) will be done by public cloud datacenters, while off-premises private cloud environments will contribute 14.6% of spending.

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.5 trillion in 2017, a 2.7 percent increase from 2016, according to Gartner. However, this growth rate is down from earlier projections of 3 percent.

EMEA purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) vendor revenues declined 9% year over year to reach $195 million in the third quarter of 2016, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker. Capacity shipped for 3Q16 totaled 237PB, an increase of 23% from 3Q15.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 72.6 million units in the fourth quarter of 2016, a 3.7 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2015, according to preliminary results by Gartner. For the year, 2016 PC shipments totaled 269.7 million units, a 6.2 percent decline from 2015. PC shipments have declined annually since 2012.

Worldwide spending on robotics and related services will more than double by 2020, growing from $91.5 billion in 2016 to more than $188 billion in 2020, according to the newly updated Worldwide Commercial Robotics Spending Guide from IDC. In addition to spending data on robotic systems, system hardware, software, robotics-related services, and after-market robotics hardware, the robotics spending guide now includes data on commercial purchase of drones and after-market drone hardware.

U.K. tech companies raised more capital than any other European country in 2016, while SoftBank’s acquisition of ARM helped Britain achieve a record year for tech deals, Bloomberg reports commenting a survey conducted by the U.K. capital’s promotional company, London & Partners.

Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs (Desktop, Notebook, and Workstation) totaled 70.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2016, posting a year-on-year decline of 1.5%, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. The results continued the recent trend of stabilizing growth, which has been in decline since 2012.

New data from Juniper Research has found that smart home hardware and service take-up in entertainment, automation, healthcare and connected devices is set to drive revenues from $83 billion in 2017 to $195 billion by 2021.

A new study from IDC highlights IT spending trends by size class in Western Europe. The study, Western Europe SMB IT Spending Forecast, 2016–2020, shows that IT spending in Western European SMBs will exceed $130 billion by 2020. The SMB segment represents a third of the total IT market, despite the relative fragility of smaller companies and their relatively small IT budgets.

Programmatic is a game-changing technology in the advertising industry. According to ZenithOptimedia Programmatic Marketing Forecasts, it will grow by an astounding 31% in 2017, and that’s faster than social media (25%) and online video (20%).

The rapid pace of technological and societal change has given government CIOs a new sense of urgency and a willingness to experiment with smart city and open data initiatives, according to Gartner. If managed effectively, this shift will position governments at the core of technological innovation in society.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, the worldwide converged systems market increased revenue 1.7% year over year to $2.6 billion during the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16). The market consumed 1.4 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up a moderate 12.5% compared to the same period a year ago.

Consumer spending on digital devices, services, and content will reach $3.4 trillion worldwide in 2020, rising 4.7% annually from 2015, according to a new forecast from IDC. The forecast is from a newly launched research program, Consumer Spending Priorities: Tech and Services, which provides a holistic view of consumer spending across all goods and services.

American President-elect Donald Trump won’t end the onslaught of posts on Twitter that fed his unconventional campaign, even after taking on the formalized duties of the Oval Office later this month, according to Bloomberg.

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) enterprise infrastructure market, which covers servers and external storage, suffered a 7% year-on-year decline in value to total $581 million in Q3 2016, according to the latest Quarterly Server and Disk Storage Systems Tracker from IDC. This decline is in line with IDC's previous forecast, which factored in the unstable political and economic environment currently characterizing the MEA region.

Organizations spend an average of 5.6 percent of the overall IT budget on IT security and risk management, according to the most recent IT Key Metrics Data from Gartner. However, IT security spending ranges from approximately 1 percent to 13 percent of the IT budget and is potentially a misleading indicator of program success, analysts said.