Electronic Home Video Over-the-Top and Digital Music Streaming See Fastest Growth in Consumer Spending

As the entertainment & media (E&M) industry continues its digital shift, advertising growth is outpacing consumer spending, according to PwC's annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2014-2018 – an in-depth five-year outlook for global consumer spending and advertising revenues directly related to entertainment and media content – released today. Attracting, retaining, and monetizing the digital consumer remains challenging and requires businesses to apply a 'digital mindset' to build the right behaviors to move from a digital strategy to a business strategy fit.

The report "Meat Substitutes Market by Source (Soy, Wheat, Mycoprotein), by Type (Tofu, Tofu-Based Product, Tempeh, TVP, Seitan, Quorn, Others), by Category (Frozen, Refrigerated) - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2019", defines and segments the global Meat Substitutes Market with an analysis and forecasting of the market value of sources, types, and categories of meat substitutes. The report also identifies the driving and restraining factors for the global market with an analysis of trends, opportunities, winning imperatives, and challenges. The market is segmented and values are forecasted on the basis of major regions, such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), and Rest of the World (ROW) with the key countries covered and forecasted for each region.

LED price for lighting applications have dropped around 3-7 percent in 2Q14. Similarly, backlight-use LED prices have also seen a decline, dipping around 5-10 percent, with direct-type TV backlight-use LEDs decreasing by 13 percent due to fierce market competition, according to the recent price report from LEDinside, the green energy research division of TrendForce.

Prices of high-power and mid-power lighting-use LEDs continue to show a slight decline this quarter. For mid-power 5630, Korean manufacturers represented by Samsung are still adopting price strategy to seize market share. High-power LED price drops were more dramatic, especially in prices for products with higher brightness (120-140lm), which had a drop rate of 7 percent this quarter.

Global LED commercial lighting market penetration rate this year soared, with growth projected to reach 23% by the end of the 2014, according to the latest "2Q14 Silver Member- Commercial Lighting Market" by LEDinside a research division of TrendForce.

Main lighting products in commercial lighting application include LED tubes, spotlights, and bulbs. Europe, North America, and China are the biggest players in this sector and are anticipated to become major markets within the next five years. LED tube market demand was US $2.58 billion in 2013 and will increase substantially to US $8.87 billion by 2018, said LEDinside Associate Manager Joanne Wu. LED tubes have become prominent in the commercial lighting sector, especially in supermarket, office, and underground parking lot where LEDs have been applied extensively. In addition to rapid improvements in design, LED tubes strength in cost/performance (C/P) is also increasing faster compared to other luminaires.

Demand in the China's Distributed PV market continues to increase, which caused manufacturers to come up with solutions in response to the trend. From the 8th SNEC Exhibition, which ended last week, we can see that PV service integration has become the strategic focus for Chinese manufacturers.

"In order to respond to downstream demand growth, manufacturers have aggressively expanded their capacities through varying measures.

The shipment performances of Smartphones, Tablets, and Notebooks were relatively weak in the first quarter due to seasonality. As a result of the entire NAND Flash market's oversupply in 1Q 2014, the branded suppliers' Q1 revenues saw a 6.6% drop compared to the previous quarter, and slid to approximately US$ 7,244 million, according to Sean Yang, Assistant Vice President at DRAMeXchange, the memory and storage research division of TrendForce.

Looking at the branded supplier revenue ranking, Samsung managed to retain its lead in the market with approximately US$ 2,175 million in sales, but saw its market share dip slightly to 30.0%; Toshiba came in second with a revenue total of US$ 1,548 million and an improved market share of 21.4%; SanDisk ended up in third place with US$ 1,367 million in revenue, while Micron came in fourth with US$ 1,050 million; Affected by its capacity allocations, SK Hynix's revenues slid to approximately US$ 594 million, resulting in market share of 8.2%.

In EMEA, Server Revenue Returned to Growth in the First Quarter of 2014

Worldwide server shipments grew 1.4 percent in the first quarter of 2014, while server revenue declined 4.1 percent year over year, according to Gartner, Inc.

Market research firm Infonetics Research released its 1st quarter 2014 (1Q14) Enterprise Unified Communications and Voice Equipment report, which tracks PBX phone systems, voice over IP gateways, unified communications (UC) applications, and IP phones.

ANALYST NOTE

"The enterprise telephony market continues to struggle as businesses hold off new PBX purchases and invest instead in unified communications (UC) applications. Purchase cycles are getting longer, and competitive activity is putting pressure on the market with pricing all over the map," notes Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research.

The report "Rare Earth Metals Market by Type (Lanthanum, Cerium, Neodymium, Praseodymium, Samarium, Europium, & Others), and Application (Magnets, Metals Alloys, Polishing, Additives, Catalysts, Phosphors, & Others) - Global Trends & Forecast to 2018", defines and segments the global rare earth metal market with analysis and forecasting of the global volume and revenue. The rare earth metals market demand will grow at a CAGR of 9% from 2013 to 2018 and reach 192,000 tons.

The Rare Earth Metals Market is driven by factors such as high demand in the current and emerging applications, increasing demand of clean energy, and initiatives taken by governments and associations.

According to a new market research report "Power Electronics Market by Substrate Wafer Technology (GaN, SiC, and Others), Devices (Power IC, Power Module & Power Discrete), Applications, and Geography - Analysis & Forecast to 2014 - 2020", published by MarketsandMarkets, Power Electronics market is expected to boom in the near future.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Emerging Printing Technologies & Applications" report to their offering.

The Emerging Printing Technologies & Applications report presents an overview of new technologies and applications emphasizing the applicability of these emerging fields to commercial printers and printing industry suppliers.

CFOs from North America and Western Europe are more optimistic compared to the rest of the world

Fifty-seven percent of finance executives believe the global economy is improving, according to the second edition of the CFO Capital Confidence Barometer results released today by EY. Though most chief financial officers (CFOs) are optimistic, striking differences exist in regional markets. Two-thirds of CFOs from North America believe conditions are improving while fewer than half of CFOs from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Middle East/Africa see their economies growing.