Tag Archives: request

Fitness Band Ownership Up, But Purchase Intent Declines

Fitness band ownership among women, a key demographic for the product, is still rising, but purchase intent has slipped, according to Piper Jaffray’s sixth semiannual women’s survey. Piper Jaffray reported Wednesday that 21% of women surveyed own a fitness band, up from 18% in the fall survey. Meanwhile, 9% of women said they own a smartwatch, up from 8% in the fall. However, the intent to buy a fitness band in the next six months fell to 15% in the spring survey, from 19% in the fall. Intent to buy a smartwatch also dipped, falling to 10% in the spring survey from 13% last fall. “While ownership has improved, we did detect the first downtick in future spending intentions on the (fitness band) category,” Piper Jaffray analyst Erinn Murphy said in a report. “We could be approaching a saturation point with select brands.” Fitbit ( FIT ) remained the No. 1 preferred fitness band, with 77% mindshare, up from 68% six months ago. Garmin ( GRMN ) and Jawbone tied for second place, each with 5% share. Apple ( AAPL ) led the smartwatch category with 49% share, up from 42% six months ago. Fitbit jumped to the No. 2 spot after announcing its Fitbit Blaze smartwatch. It grabbed 20% mindshare, up 9% last fall. Samsung fell to third place with 14% share, down from 19% six months ago. Fitbit overtook Under Armour ( UA ) as the top fitness app provider in the spring survey. Fitbit garnered 29% mindshare in fitness apps, up from 18% last fall. Under Armour dropped to second place with 22% share vs. 27% last fall. Some 30% of women use a fitness app, down from 32% six months ago, the survey showed. For its latest survey, Piper Jaffray interviewed more than 1,000 U.S. women, with an average age of 49 and 73% with a household income of $35,000 to $80,000. RELATED: Apple Watch Shipments Slowed In Holiday Quarter . Fitbit Face-Plants After Giving Weak Q1 Guidance, User Numbers .  

What Now? ServiceNow Confirms BMC Deal Pending; SAP, CRM Rise

Enterprise software developer ServiceNow ( NOW ) advised the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday that a federal court in Texas has granted a 30-day stay of all deadlines — notably this Friday’s deadline to start trial — in its defense against patent-violation claim s by BMC Software. ServiceNow and BMC requested the stay “so that the parties may document the agreement and submit appropriate dismissal papers,” ServiceNow said in an 8K filing with the SEC. What now? ServiceNow stock was down 1%, below 60, in early afternoon trade in the stock market today , after rising 3.6% Tuesday as word spread that a legal settlement was in the works. ServiceNow stock still is up for the week and could notch its fourth consecutive week of gains, after shares hit a 22-month low in early February. Shares are still 34% off a record high of 91.28 set Dec. 4. ServiceNow went public in June 2012, priced at 18. More-established rivals Salesforce.com ( CRM ) and SAP ( SAP ) were making their own moves. SAP, the largest in IBD’s Computer Software-Enterprise industry group by market cap, was up a fraction, near 77, Wednesday afternoon, just 5% off a nearly two-year high of 81.21 set Dec. 29. No. 2 player Salesforce.com was up 1.5%, near 71, 14% off a record high of 82.90 set Nov. 19. With a market cap of $9.6 billion, a tenth the size of SAP, ServiceNow is the fifth-largest member of the industry group. Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne, in a research note Wednesday, said that the dispute with BMC is “more of a short-term concern … than a wall of worry related to a possible penalty or injunction. “Nevertheless, we believe the (pending) settlement between the two companies does remove a near-term overhang and should allow investors to refocus attention on the longer-term opportunity,” he wrote. “We do not believe that the trial with BMC was impacting sales cycles. … We continue to like the risk/reward longer-term, but as we noted after meeting with the company in early February, NOW is likely to remain in ‘show me’ mode until it reports” its Q1 results. ServiceNow stock crashed 16% on Jan. 28 after the company reported Q4 billings below expectations, though EPS ex items jumped 533% to 19 cents, twice analysts’ expectations, and revenue rose 44% to $285.6 million, also topping Wall Street views. Materne maintained a buy rating on ServiceNow stock, with an 83 price target. Hewlett Packard Enterprise ( HPE ) also has patent infringement claims pending against ServiceNow, filed originally by the former Hewlett-Packard company.      

Good News For Alphabet, Facebook In Ad Spending Budgets, Benefits

Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Facebook ( FB ) scored big in a survey of advertisers, receiving the highest budget allocations and the best return on investment of digital media properties. The survey of almost 2,000 advertising professionals by RBC Capital Markets had somewhat good news for Twitter ( TWTR ) and LinkedIn ( LNKD ), but not for Yahoo ( YHOO ) or AOL, which was acquired last year by Verizon Communications ( VZ ). Alphabet, via its Google properties, led the pack in the survey that asked advertisers to rank the order of major online-ad platforms based on the return on investment. Facebook and Alphabet’s YouTube followed. Twitter and LinkedIn were next, with Yahoo and AOL last. Twitter was the only platform to see a clear falloff in its relative ROI vs. the prior survey by RBC. When marketers were asked about current spending plans, Google was strongest, followed by Facebook and YouTube, then Twitter and LinkedIn. In terms of ad spend over the next year, 62% of advertisers expect to increase their ad spend on Facebook, while 54% expect to do so with Google, then 32% for Twitter. The trend is quite apparent that ad dollars are moving from TV to online channels, according to the survey. “The trend of pulling ad dollars from television seems to have meaningfully increased,” the RBC report said. The second biggest transfer of ad dollars came from print media. A record 57% of marketers, up from 49% in its previous two surveys, allocate more than 20% of their budgets to online, including a record 23% who allocate over 50% of their budgets to online spending. “We expect online ad spend to continue growing robustly, with a record high 82% of our survey respondents expecting their online marketing budgets to increase over the next year, vs. 16% who expect them to stay the same,” it said. “Clearly, online has become a crucial marketing channel and is continuing to gain importance — a strong secular investment trend, in our view.” Mobile has also become an increasingly important channel, with 73% of marketers allocating some of their online marketing budget to smartphones, vs. 71% in RBC’s previous survey. “We believe mobile will only continue to grow in importance to marketers,” RBC said.