Server revenue in the major countries of South Asia will grow to $1,569 mln by the end of 2011, and shipments will top 376,800 units. Sales will depend on the stability of the political environment in emerging markets and continued foreign investment in India’s IT industry, Gartner said.

The worldwide VTL market will double in value over the next five years, reaching $1.4 bln by 2011, while the market terabytes will increase at a rapid 47.4% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) over the same period, IDC predicted.

Packaged software continues to be the fastest growing segment in Western European process manufacturing IT spending YTY, with a CAGR over the forecast period of 5.9%. IT services is the biggest segment, with a market value of $16.8 bln in 2006, and offers good growth, mainly driven by operations management services. Overall hardware growth is weak except for the networking segment, which is expected to grow strongly in the short term, with 9.2% growth in 2006. Food, beverage, and tobacco is the sub-vertical with the best opportunities over the forecast period, with a CAGR of 4.6%, followed by the pharmaceutical industry. The textile and wood products industries will continue to be weak in IT spending, with a CAGR of 2.0% over the forecast period, Manufacturing Insights reports.

68 mln of US Internet users performed an yellow pages search online in July 2006. This represents a 46% increase versus year ago. When analyzing the total share of yellow pages searches, which by their nature have local intent, comScore’s data reveals that Yahoo! Sites and Verizon SuperPages garnered the largest share, with 23.9% and 20.1%, respectively. Google Sites ranked third in IYP searches, capturing 12.5%, followed by Yellowpages.com with 12.0%.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! sites ranked as the top 3 spots among European Internet users, with each remaining relatively flat versus July. Of the top 10 European sites, Wikipedia saw the greatest gain during August, growing 9% to 50.9 mln visitors.

Spending on enterprise application software (EAS) expanded a substantial 16% to more than $187 million in 2005 across the Arab Middle East and North Africa. According to IDC, it will shoot up a further 12.5% this year as budget surpluses from high oil prices are poured back into the national economies as part of diversification programs, fueling the competitive environment and creating a need for advanced enterprise applications. In terms of implementation, banks, discrete manufacturers, and the thriving oil and gas industry accounted for more than 40% of EAS investments in the region last year.

Personal income in September 2006 rose at an annual rate of 0.5%, seasonally adjusted; the figure for August 2006 was 0.4%. Personal consumption spending, on the other hand, was essentially flat, rising at an annual rate of only 0.1% in September 2006 after 0.2% in August 2006, US Commerce Dept said.

Newspaper Association of America (NAA) analysis of data on 770 newspapers released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations found that average daily circulation of US newspapers fell 2.8% to about 43.8 mln copies for the six months ended Sept. 30, 2006.

80% of American internet users, or some 113 mln adults, have searched for information on at least one of seventeen health topics. Most internet users start at a general search engine when researching health and medical advice online. Just 15% of health seekers say they always check the source and date of the health information they find online, while another 10% say they do so most of the time. 75% of health seekers say they check the source and date only sometimes, hardly ever, or never, which translates to about 85 mln Americans gathering health advice online without consistently examining the quality indicators of the information they find. Most health seekers are pleased about what they find online, but some are frustrated or confused, Pew Internet & American Life Project says.

South Korea’s server market is reaching maturity. Its revenue is forecast to top $980 mln in 2006, but will fall to $969 mln by 2011. The country’s share of Asia/Pacific’s server market will also decline. Sales will depend heavily on economic stability and government IT policies, Gartner says.

Nearly each of the top 10 general news Web sites experienced gains in September 2006 as Americans reflected on the events of September 11th five years ago. Yahoo! News led the pack with 35.8 mln visitors, followed by MSNBC with 27.3 mln visitors and CNN with 24.4 mln visitors. AOL News represented the biggest gainer within the top 10 news sites with 24.1 mln visitors, a 19% increase versus August 2006.

An analysis of visitors to MySpace.com shows that as the site has experienced dramatic visitor growth, it has become more popular among older Internet users. The most significant shift has occurred among teens 12-17, who accounted for 24.7% of the MySpace audience in August 2005, but today represent a much lower 11.9% of the site?s total audience. Conversely, Internet users between the ages of 35-54 now account for 40.6% of the MySpace visitor base, an 8.2% increase during the past year.

70% of companies polled by Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills said recently hired high school students, which proved to be deficient in academic skills, such as grammar, spelling, and written communications.

San Francisco Bay Area companies attracted $1.99 billion in venture funding during Q3 2006, according to MoneyTree. The level of VC investments dipped 10% compared to Q3 2005, when $2.2 bln was invested in Silicon Valley startups.

35% of Americans tell Associated Press and AOL they check the Internet for political updates about campaigns and candidates, that number grows to 43% of likely voters. 40% of men search the Web for political news, compared with 40% ?? women. About 40% of those under age 50 search the Web for political news, compared with fewer than 20% of those 65 and over.

The Western European WLAN equipment market reached a value of $1.2 bln end-user revenue in the first half of 2006, according to IDC. The residential market continues to be the main driver of the European WLAN market, accounting for 80% of the total market. During the first half of 2006 this segment experienced 22% growth over the second half of 2005. In the first six months, 6.6 mln wireless routers/gateways were sold to the consumer market. ZyXEL successfully improved its market position in the European residential market and now holds the #1 position, followed by Thomson and Linksys.

In August 2006, European traffic to photo sites rose 5%, led by Imageshack.us, with 13.0 mln visitors (a 10% increase versus July 2006), followed by Flickr.com with 6.5 mln visitors (an 11% gain) and Piczo.com with 6.4 mln visitors (a 10% gain). As Europeans sought to share their best summer pictures, Photobucket.com and Pbase.com achieved the highest growth rates, increasing 15% and 18%, respectively versus the prior month.

Visitors to MySpace.com and Friendster.com generally skew older, with people age 25 and older comprising 68 and 71% of their user bases, respectively, comScore says. Meanwhile, Xanga.com has a younger user profile, with 20% of its users in the 12-17 age range, about twice as high as that age segment?s representation within the total Internet audience. Not surprisingly, Facebook.com, which began as a social networking site for college students, also draws a younger audience. More than one-third (34%) of visitors to Facebook.com are 18-24 years old, approximately three times the representation of that age segment in the general Internet population.