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.

Worldwide factory revenue for the high performance computing (HPC) technical server market grew by 3.9% to $2.8 billion in the third quarter of 2016, compared with $2.7 billion in the prior-year third quarter. Revenue for the first three quarters of 2016 totaled $8.1 billion, up 3.4% from the $7.8 billion total for the same period last year, according to new data from IDC Worldwide High-Performance Technical Server Q View.

Children who chat on social media suffer the consequences, according to Bloomberg. Kids who spend more time chatting on social websites feel reduced satisfaction about all parts of their lives except for their friendships, research from the British Institute of Labor Economics shows.

Consumer confidence is ending the year on a largely positive note, according to GfK. Economic expectations have increased slightly, while income expectations have seen significant growth. In contrast, propensity to buy has suffered moderate losses. The overall consumer climate index is forecasting 9.9 points for the first month of next year, after a figure of 9.8 points in December.

Advances in various technologies will drive users to interact with their smartphones in more intuitive ways, said Gartner. They predicts that, by 2019, 20 percent of all user interactions with the smartphone will take place via virtual personal assistants (VPAs).

Smartphones offering resistance against water damage and other liquids grew 45.2% year on year in the first nine months of 2016 in Western Europe, while shipments of non-water–resistant smartphones declined 17% in the same period. Water resistant smartphones reached 22.5 million units in the period to represent 23% of the total number of smartphones shipped in 2016 to date, according to the IDC European Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

Latest research from GfK into the UK’s OTT viewing habits has revealed surprisingly low audience numbers on mobile devices. It seems that watching subscription video content on Netflix, Amazon and Now TV is, for now, most definitely an in-home entertainment experience.

Worldwide purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) factory revenues were down 7.9% year over year, totaling $737.5 million in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker. Total PBBA open systems factory revenue decreased 7.2% year over year during the quarter with revenues of $686.1 million.

Smart machines will enter mainstream adoption by 2021, with 30 percent adoption by large companies, according to Gartner. Technologies including cognitive computing, artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent automation, machine learning and deep learning fall under the umbrella term for smart machines.

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) wearables market continued to see steady growth in Q3 2016, according to the latest insights from IDC. MEA wearables market grew 38.3% year on year in Q3 2016 to total approximately 487,000 units.

IDC EMEA Server Tracker shows that in the third quarter of 2016 the EMEA server market reported a year-on-year decline in vendor revenues of 14.3% to $2.6 billion and a YoY decrease of 7.2% in units shipped to just over 500,000.

In 2017, nearly 60% of the US population will be digital banking users, according to eMarketer’s new forecast. Some 150.7 million adults will access their bank, credit card, or brokerage accounts at least once a month via digital channels.

China’s e-sports games revenues are expected to exceed US$7.3 billion for 2016, up more than 50% from 2015 thanks to the increasing popularity of tournaments as more organizers and players jump on the bandwagon, according to IDC 2016 China E-sports Industry Review and Outlook.

Digital video will be watched by more than 998.0 million people in the Asia-Pacific region in 2016, according to eMarketer's new estimates for the region. Not surprisingly, China makes up a huge portion of the total for the region, with more than half (530.4 million) of the total regional user base.

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%.