ABI Research forecasts that by 2011 there will be over 146 mln ICs that combine host processor and Bluetooth functionality, while Bluetooth/Wi-Fi and Bluetooth/UWB combination ICs are likely to see 61 mln and 59 mln IC shipments in 2011 respectively.

By 2012 the market for femtocells looks set to represent 36 mln shipments with an installed base of nearly 70 mln femtocells serving over 150 mln users. This represents a turnover equal to one third of the Wi-Fi market, ABI Research says.

Blogger, tmz.com and TypePad were among the highest-ranked blog hosts in July 2007.

According to Harris Interactive, 17% of US adults currently own or use a GPS location device or service. The most widely used devices were small handheld systems (34%) and portable car-mounted GPS systems (33%). Other systems used include GPS-enabled PDAs or laptop computers (26%), cars with integrated GPS systems (25%), cell phones (13%) and other (7%). Key features for GPS owners include automatic route recalculation for driving errors (with 81% finding them extremely or very useful) and real-time traffic update (75%). Other key features rated useful by GPS owners are multiple destination routing (73%), voice guidance and alerts (71%) text to speech capability (71%), inclusion of points of interest such as hotels or restaurants (63%), proximity alerts (57%), 2D and 3D maps (57%) and Bluetooth interface (45%).

There are a few features that GPS owners may not take advantage of with their GPS system. Just over two-thirds (68%) say that digital picture slideshows are not useful on GPS, and even with the popularity of digital music, a substantial majority (69%) feels that digital music capability on a GPS is not very useful or not at all useful. While some cell phones offer turn-by-turn instructions, similar to handheld GPS systems, awareness of these services remains relatively low with about one in five (19%) adults saying they are highly aware (8% extremely aware and 11% very aware) of the service. 15% of those who have a cell phone are interested in getting GPS service on their next cell phone, with half of them citing that having GPS would make them feel more secure knowing where they are at, regardless of city (53%) or that it would help them to find alternative routes around traffic congestion (47%). Thirty-eight% say that providing fast and direct turn-by-turn directions to business meetings/appointments is a benefit, while one-third say they would never have to stop and ask for directions (33%) or get lost in an undesirable part of town (29%).

The worldwide market for array processing equipment for TFT-LCDs will decrease 14% in 2007 after dropping 11% in 2006, according to The Information Network. The array processing equipment market will recover in 2008 and 2009, growing 28% and 8%, respectively.

The total semiconductor market for DVD recorders is declining, and will drop below $500 mln in 2008, In-Stat claims.

Nielsen//NetRatings published a list of top blog hosts as of June 2007.

Worldwide service provider router market will grow at double-digit rates over the next five years and surpass $9 bln in 2011, Dell’Oro Group predicts.

ABI Research says automotive cameras market will enjoy a revenue stream well in excess of $100 mln by 2012.

UMA services, devices, and subscribers are still growing, and subscriber numbers should reach 65 mln by 2012, ABI Research says.

Nielsen//NetRatings published the list of the top video sites in July 2007. YouTube was visited by 55,135,000 unique hosts, and maintained the lead, while Veoh showed the strongest growth.

Under the drive of the strong market demand, the operating performance of the three leaders, Tom-Tom, Garmin and Mitac, in PND market, all increased rapidly in 2005 and 2006. The annual revenue of Tom-Tom was nearly USD 1.6 bln in 2006, while that was just USD 10 mln in 2002; the shipment of Garmin navigation devices was 389.9 thousand units in 2005 and, that amounted to 1.443 mln units in 2006, up 270.1% year-on-year. Moreover, Taiwan ODM Mitac is not only the OEM of Tom-Tom and other makers, but it has its own brand Mio, and since acquired Europe-based Navman in 2007, the market share of Mio and Navman was increased to nearly 20% in 2006, which made Mitac rank to the 2nd place in Europe market just after Tom-Tom. The market concentration of PND is comparatively high in the world and, the market share of Tom-Tom, Garmin and Mitac totaled 70% plus, ReportLinker says.

The Europe PND market is with the fastest increase in the world in 2005 and 2006, the total sales of PND products amounted to 7.4 mln units in West Europe in 2006, and it is forecasted that will increase to 11.8 mln units in 2007. The year of 2006 saw two peak seasons in PND sales in West Europe, one is from June to August, the consumers bought a large number of PND for the convenience in holiday traveling; and the other was at the end of 2006, the traditional sales peak season, the PND product sales during Christmas accounted for 8% of the total.

The average price of PND in West Europe market was EUR 417 in 2006 and, the price in Switzerland market was the highest, about EUR 413, and the prices in France and UK both decreased about 20% to EUR 364-367, while that remained EUR 351 in German market. The prices in the whole West Europe market all dropped to some extent in 2006, German market decreased EUR 43, while Spain market was with the largest drop margin, and the average price descended to EUR 287 in the end of 2006 from EUR 472 in the end of 2005. North America Market is still dominated by Garmin, which remained the 1st place in the market by 50.3% of market share in 2006, and others such as Magellan, Tom-Tom, Mio, Lowrance, and Destinator etc, controlled large of the left. Sony, which entered America vehicle portable navigation device market on Apr 9th, 2006, obtained 2% of the market share as well.

The worldwide market for peer-to-peer and file sharing services is expected to generate $28 bln in revenue for carriers and ISPs over the next four years, Insight Research Corporation says.

US consumers have purchased less than 3.5 mln high-def discs: 1.4 mln HD DVDs and 2.0 mln Blu-ray discs, implying that the 1.5 mln Blu-ray owners have purchased on average 1.3 Blu-ray discs. Among the 300,000 HD DVD owners, the attach rate is much higher - 4.7 to be exact, The Diffusion group says.

Nielsen//NetRatings published a list of top video sites in June 2007.

Yankee Group announced that consumer VoIP adoption continued at an aggressive pace in 2006, growing more than 125% and reaching more than 9 mln subscribers. Consumer VoIP services made headway by penetrating 9% of all US households, up from 4% in the previous year. VoIP is evolving beyond being a residential phone equivalent and is embedding itself into web-based advertisements, web site assistance and other click-to-call solutions. In addition, as consumers begin to demand inexpensive anywhere connectivity, there is more demand for mobile VoIP. The opportunity for VoIP on dual-mode mobile phones will increase as the number of units in use rises from 913,000 in 2006 to 22 mln in 2011. At 167%, cable VoIP experienced the strongest growth in 2006. The majority of residential VoIP subscribers will subscribe to bundles from cable companies by 2011.

Some 15.2 mln UK households (61% of homes) now have an internet connection, compared with 54% in 2006, research from National Statistics found. London and south-west England had the highest online penetration at 69%, with Northern Ireland lowest at 52%. 84% of UK web-enabled households said they had a broadband connection, up from 69% in May 2006.

The utilization rate of semiconductor plants worldwide was 89.7% in Q2 2007, up from 87.5% in Q1 2007, Semiconductor International Capacity Statistics (SICAS) group said.