Growth in worldwide PC sales is likely to reach 15% in 2004, with the shipment of 177 million units, Piper Jaffray predicted. In 2005, shipments will grow by 12% to 197 million units, the company said.

Broadband penetration is currently at 55-60% in Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. It’s 13-15% in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. by the end of 2004, Europe will have 33.5 million broadband subscribers, which means that broadband will reach about 20% of all homes. This figure is projected to climb to 41% by 2008.

In canvassing federal agencies, the accounting office found that 52 were systematically sifting through computer databases. These agencies reported 199 data mining projects, of which 68 were planned and 131 were in operation. At least 122 of the 199 projects used identifying information like names, e-mail addresses, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

Microsoft’s sales of relational database software rose 11% in 2003, outpacing growth at the market’s two top players, IBM and Oracle. The entire relational database market grew 5.1% to $7.0 bil in 2003, after having fallen nearly 6% in 2002, according to Gartner. Oracle’s database software sales rose 2.4% in 2003 as its market share declined to 32.6% from 33.4% in 2002, leaving it in the second spot. IBM retained the top position as its market share was flat at 35.7% with growth of 4.9% in 2003 over 2002. The market for databases on the Linux open source operating system more than doubled to $299 mil from $116 mil a year earlier.

The number of servers sold worldwide increased by 27.1% in Q1 2004 to 1.57 mln units, with a clear move by users towards low-end servers and the Linux operating system, Gartner said. The growth in the low-end market meant that server hardware revenues only rose by 9.3% compared with the same period last year, to $11.8 bln. Revenue of Linux-based server hardware rose 57.3% over the period, while commercial Unix server revenues fell 2.3%.

News.com quotes the results of Vividence survey. 90% of Google users reported having a strongly positive experience, while only 68% of users said the same of Yahoo, 50% for Ask Jeeves, 48% for Lycos and 41% for MSN. Google users searching for the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 25 and 34 found the information they were looking for 55% of the time. The company’s rivals fell close behind with between 52% and 54% success rates.

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for Q1 2004 was $15.5 billion, an increase of 28.1% from Q1 2003. Total retail sales for Q1 2004 were estimated at $834.8 billion, an increase of 8.8% from the same period a year ago. E-commerce sales in Q1 2004 accounted for 1.9% of total sales, while in Q1 2003 e-commerce sales were 1.6% of total sales. In Q4 2003, e-commerce sales were also 1.9% of total sales.

Internet advertising revenues rose to an all-time quarterly high of nearly $2.3 billion in Q1 2004, according to research estimates from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In Q2 2002 Cisco had 68% of the market to Juniper’s 24%. By Q1 2004, Cisco’s lead had shrunk to 59% while Juniper’s grew to 34%.

The most quoted media sites:

1. The New York Times

2. CNN
3. BBC
4. Washington Post
5. Slashdot
6. Guardian
7. Plastic
8. Suicide Girls
9. Salon
10. BoingBoing
11. Instapundit
12. Slate
13. Fox
14. SFGate
15. Reuters
16. Drudge Report

Forrester Research now says it expects that 830,000 U.S. service jobs will move to low-wage countries such as China, India, and Mexico by the end of 2005. Last year, the firm put that number at 588,000. The new study estimates that 3.4 million jobs will move offshore by 2015, up from 3.3 million predicted last year.

The Nordic PC market grew more than 20% in Q1 2004 compared to Q1 2003. With growth above 20% the Nordic PC market kept the momentum of late 2003 in Q1 2004, with a total of 830,000 desktop and portable PCs being shipped in the four countries - the highest number ever recorded in Q1. Though the market is fuelled by very low prices, they seem to have settled and are not expected to drop further quarter on quarter. Other factors contributing to growth include a strong upgrade cycle from businesses.

Forrester says that online music business is expected to grow from a projected $308 million now to $4.4 billion in 2008.

New York Times in the article on upcoming Nanosys IPO mentions federal government predicting a $1 trillion revenue level for nanotechnologies.

The New York Times reflects on the topic of innovation vs. follow-up and posts valuable statistics on the printer market in the side bar. For inkjet printer IDC reports the following market shares for 2003: HP - 44.1%, Epson - 20.1%, Lexmark - 15.6%, Canon - 14.9%, Dell - 1.8%. For grayscale laser printers the market share in 2003 were as follows: HP - 44.1%, Samsung - 9.8%, Canon - 7.7%, Brother - 7.4%, Lexmark - 5.8%, Dell - 0.4%.

Sharp forecasts that global shipments of mobile phones with color screens will increase by 140 million units in the current business year.

Games, ring tones, video and music download capabilities will generate as much as $8 billion in Western Europe in 2008.

Gartner published a report predicting that over the next two years 220 million corporate desktop PCs will be replaced: 100 million in 2004 and 120 million in 2005. The company said this will be the largest hardware refresh since Y2K.