Category — Financial

Ever since the eBook as a format appeared in the early part of the decade, the market has been growing steadily. However, the biggest spike has come in the past few years thanks to the proliferation of devices such as Kindle. Also, with iPad and other tablet devices launching this year, can 2010 be the year where we will see eBooks being established as the format of choice?

Here is the revenues made from eBook sale as reported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). AAP’s estimated numbers for industry wide net sale is provided alongside in brackets.

2006 : $25.2 million ($54 million)
2007 : $31.7 million ($67 million)
2008 : $61.3 million ($113 million)
2009 : $169.5 million

Data ARPU among American mobile network service providers is steadily on the rise since 2004 and the corresponding number for voice has been falling. In a study of the network performance in the last quarter of 2009, Wireless Intelligence has found that ARPU has overall declined thanks to users spreading their spending across multiple connections. Here are the numbers gathered for the top US network carriers

AT&T : $50.69
Cincinnati Bell : $43.89
Leap Wireless : $38.66
MetroPCS : $40.70
nTelos Wireless : $51.48
Sprint : $49.26
T-Mobile : $46.00
US Cellular : $53.55
Verizon Wireless : $50.23

Overall ARPU for Q4 ‘09 : $49.31 (down from $50.61 in Q3 ‘09)

Thanks to the terrific growth in number of subscribers, mobile network service providers from the emerging economies are among the fastest growing companies. According to a recent study by TeleGeography, three companies have doubled their revenues in the past three years and all of them happen to be from the developing world. Here are the list of countries ranked by growth.

> 100% growth
1. MTN
2. Bharti
3. Zain

45%- 100% growth
4. AT&T
5. America Movil
6. China Mobile
7. Vodafone

0%-40% growth
8. Sistema
9. SingTel
10. Verizon
11. Carso
12. Telefonica
13. Deutche Telekom
14. BT

Negative growth
France Telecom
NTT

The average revenue per user (ARPU) on voice has been steadily falling as the data usage has been on the rise. According to a study by Chetan Sharma Consulting, Voice ARPU among American network operators has fallen by close to $15 between 2004 and 2009. On the other hand, data ARPU has increased by nearly $11. While the overall ARPU has definitely fallen, the increase in number of subscribers has meant that the revenues are on an upward trend.

Here are the ARPUs recorded

Voice ARPU
Q4 ‘04 : $50
Q4 ‘05 : $47
Q4 ‘06 : $44
Q4 ‘07 : $41
Q4 ‘08 : $37
Q4 ‘09 : $35

Data ARPU
Q4 ‘04 : $4.00
Q4 ‘05 : $5.50
Q4 ‘06 : $8.00
Q4 ‘07 : $10.50
Q4 ‘08 : $13.00
Q4 ‘09 : $15

Apple iTunes just crossed a milestone..Over 10 billion songs have now been downloaded from the online music store. Here are the approximate revenues made by Apple over the past few years from its iTunes store

2006 : $895 million
2007 : $1.20 billion
2008 : $1.59 billion
2009 : $1.80 billion

In 2007, Apple’s profits from its mobile handset business constituted just 3% of the overall profits made by the industry. At the end of 2009, this number was 37%. The biggest loser in this period has undoubtedly been Nokia whose share of profits has fallen from 60% in 2007 to 31% in 2009. Here is how the profits were shared among handset manufacturers in 2009.

Nokia : 31%
Samsung : 16%
LG : 8%
Sony Ericsson : -8%
Motorola : -6%
RIM : 20%
Apple : 37%
HTC : 5%
Palm : -3%
Industry Avg. : 12%

Google’s share of revenue from United States have fallen below the 50% over the past one year. One of the primary contributors to Google’s revenue from outside the United States is UK.

Google’s total revenues in Q4 2009 : $6.67 billion

Share of revenue from USA
Q4 2008 : 50%
Q3 2009 : 47%
Q4 2009 : 47%

Google revenue from UK : $772 million (12%)

There are over 380 million Chinese who use the internet today. Popular activities include gaming, shopping and social networking. Revenues from these as well as advertising is seen to propel the industry in the near future. Here are the estimated online revenues from China according to a study conducted by iResearch

2008 : 57.15 billion Yuan
2009 : 74.30 billion Yuan (@ 30% growth)
2010 : 112.3 billion Yuan (@ 51% growth)

A Forrester Research study on the uptake of digital music against the decline in purchase of physical music reveals that digital music growth is still not enough to cover the decline in physical sales. Here is the projected revenues from digital music sales in the years ahead

2008 : $1.7 billion
2009 : $1.8 billion
2010 : $2.1 billion
2011 : $2.4 billion
2012 : $2.7 billion
2013 : $3.1 billion
2014 : $3.4 billion

[Thanks Chris]

Twitter’s 1.84% market share in the US is no match for Facebook’s 58% share. LinkedIn users’ average salary of $110,000 is much higher than the other social networks. Despite all this, Twitter manages to have reduced the gap between the companies when it comes to its estimated valuation. Most probably because Twitter offers real time information that other networks like Facebook don’t and which has become extremely pivotal in online search.

Here are the implied valuation of the three companies as measured by NYPPEX
Facebook : $7.6 billion
LinkedIn : $1.25 billion
Twitter : $1.13 billion

Estimated Revenues for 2010
Facebook : $710 million
LinkedIn : $205 million
Twitter : $1.3 million