Asia Pacific digital cameras market (excluding Japan) is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.9% from 2006 to 2013, Frost & Sullivan says.

Worldwide sales of microprocessors were up 2.3% in November 2007, boosted by strong demand for consumer products, the Semiconductor Industry Association said. Chip sales rose to $23.1 bln in November 2007, up from $22.5 bln in November 2006. Year-to-date chip sales were at $231 bln, up 2.8% from $225 bln for the year-ago period.

Expanding use of LEDs into automotive LCD backlighting and exteriors lighting - most recently, fully LED-based front headlights. Major LED vendors, including Nichia, OSRAM and Lumileds are currently working with automotive partners to gain a major share of a market that will be worth $1 bln by 2014, Strategy Analytics reports.

The combined market for printers, multifunction products and copiers in India will grow at an 8.9% compound annual growth rate through 2011, with shipments increasing to 3.6 mln units. Flatbed MFPs will see the highest growth with a 20.0% CAGR through 2011, Gartner says.

Shipments of 802.16e-compliant infrastructure overtook 802.16d in 2007. North America service revenues will account for 41% of all service revenues in 2012.

European ringtone sales are expected to be about $1.1 bln in 2007, about 10% higher than 2006, while the value of mobile games sold will be $550 mln, about 33% above a year earlier, JupiterResearch reports.

48% of US households are aware of the digital TV transition, compared to just 29% from a survey taken in July 2005. Groups most familiar with the transition are subscribers to broadband services (45%), digital cable service (40%), and basic cable service (39%). 17% of survey respondents, representing more than 19 mln homes, don’t have any televisions connected to a video service provider. Households that don’t have any televisions connected to a video service provider were least familiar with the transition at 31%. 47% of respondents said they do not know when the digital transition will occur, and 26% believe it will take place sometime other than the designated year 2009. Of those who are aware of the DTV transition, 38% said they’d learned about it from TV; 26% had read of it in the newspaper; and 20% had heard about it from friends or family. 50% of households that watch TV exclusively over the air said they don’t know where to turn for information about the transition. The majority of households that currently receive cable, satellite or any other TV service have all their TV sets connected to some type of TV service, therefore are unlikely to need digital-to-analog converters to keep their analog TV sets working. However, 25% of these connected households, or 23.3 mln homes, said they also have at least one or more unconnected sets in their homes. 40% of households with an unconnected television set said they use those sets to watch broadcast TV programs only; 22% use them to watch DVDs; and 16% use them for video games, CTAM reports.

Small and medium businesses in the United States will close the year by spending about $240 bln on beefing up their IT and telecom infrastructure and applications, up 16% over all of 2006, AMI Partners reports. 25% of that will be devoted to IT services such as consulting, software support, IT management, computing and network support. Another 25% will be spent on telecom services, including cell phone service, IP centrex, local and long-distance telephony, pager services and WAN.

US mattress industry faces many dynamic issues, including regulation, competition from smaller companies and foreign manufacturers, environmental concerns, and the changing demographics of their consumers. Relatively recession-proof, shipment growth has been steady at an 11% annual rate over the past five years and is expected to continue double-digit growth over the next five, reaching $11 bln in the US by 2011, Reportlinker says.

Nielsen estimates DVR penetration to be at 20%, up from 12% in January 2007. Ratings increase just over 15% due to DVR playback from live to live-plus-seven. The average rating against adults aged 18-49 was 2.5 for live viewing and 2.9 for live-plus-seven viewing; an increase of only 16.7%. While fast-forwarding through the ads is still an issue, not all people who use a DVR fast-forward. The data show that less than half of people who watch a recorded program fast-forward through the ads during playback.

More than 50% of US households now own a digital television (DTV), according to Consumer Electronics Association. 2008 will continue to demonstrate the growth and success of DTV, with nearly 32 mln units forecasted to ship. Consumers are particularly keen to add HDTV to their homes, with high definition expected to account for 79% of total DTV shipments in the U.S in 2008. Manufacturers will post 11% revenue growth, to over $25 bln, from sales of digital televisions in 2007. CEA also forecasts 13% revenue and 17% unit sales growth for digital television in 2008.

MasterCard Advisors estimated that sales grew 3.6% from Thanksgiving 2007 to Christmas 2007, compared with growth rates of 6.6% in 2006 and 8.7% in 2007.

About 38% of US consumers are watching TV shows online, 36% use their cell phones as entertainment devices and 45% are creating online content like Web sites, music, videos and blogs for others, according to Deloitte & Touche. About 62% of consumers 13-to-24-years-old are using their cell phones as entertainment devices, up from 46% in the previous study conducted in February 2007. Among 25-to-41-year-olds, the number grew to 47% from 29%.

IDC published its PC market growth forecasts for 2006-2011.

Every year Harris Poll has been asking Americans how many hours they spend at work.

Scripting languages are used by 56% of developers today, and while more than half of those developers use scripts less than 20% of the time, both the total number of developers using scripting languages and the amount of time spent is expected to increase during the coming year, Evans Data reports. Linux was strong for both target and platform with PHP and Ruby users. 54% of developers write multi-threaded applications. The primary perceived obstacle to multi-core development is the complexity of parallel programming, followed by a lack of available tools. 51% of North American developers use agile development techniques some part of the time, and that share is expected to increase in 2008.

IDC published its predictions regarding PC market shipments in 2006-2011.

In the three years since The Harris Poll last asked Americans to detail their two or three favorite leisure time activities, things have remained the same, yet at the same time, changed. Topping the list of favorite activities are reading, TV watching and spending time with friends and family. While these are the same top three as in 2004, what has changed is the share of people who cite these as their favorites. In all three cases, the numbers have dropped. Over one-third (35%) cited reading in 2004, in 2007 that is down to 29%. TV watching has dropped from 21% to 18% and spending time with friends and family has dropped from 20% to 14%. Rounding out the top five leisure time activities are computer activities, which has risen from 7% to 9% and going to the movies, which has dropped from 10% to seven%.