US workers aged 18-34 prefer flexible working conditions 2:1 over other age groups. 70% of Citrix survey respondents agreed that working remotely would be a welcome opportunity. Although 23% of American workers regularly work from an offsite location, using Web technology to do their jobs, 62% of those who don’t currently Web commute agreed they would like to do so. Respondents aged 18-34 were more apt than most to look forward to controlling their own schedules, while 35-44 year olds said they would prize more time with family.

The Direct-to-Home (DTH) pay-TV market is expected to continue growing at about 7.6% annually in subscribers from 2006 to 2011, and new services such as high-definition TV will help increase revenue, reports In-Stat.

E-commerce revenue has grown from $7.4 bln at the middle of 2000 to $34.7 bln in Q3 2007, up from $29.1 bln in Q3 2006, and $24.1 bln Q3 2005, according to Pew Internet. In 2007 e-commerce accounts for 3.4% of total retail sales in the US, up from 0.8% in early 2000. YTY growth in e-commerce was 19.3% in Q3 2007, comparable to the growth in 2006 but slower than the (roughly) 40% growth rates in 2001 and 2002. E-commerce revenues, however, have grown by nearly fivefold (in comparisons of quarterly e-commerce sales) from $7.4 bln in mid-2000 to $34.7 bln in mid-2007.

POS Terminals running Microsoft Windows OS drove $3.8 bln of the $5.56 bln North American Retail POS Terminal Market in 2007, according to IHL Group. IBM 4690 terminals generated $1.02 bln and Linux-based machines $475 mln, with DOS and other operating systems being installed on the remainder of units. Overall shipments increased 5% in 2006, with Specialty Stores, Quick Service/Fast Food Restaurants and Supercenters providing the greatest growth and Department Stores showing the only negative growth for the year.

Three-quarters of Super Bowl viewers said that they intended to log onto the Internet on the day of the Super Bowl. Of those who planned to go online, most said they would do so before the game (82%) or after the game (61%). 30% also indicated they would log on during the game itself (29%) or during halftime (28%). Of those who planned to go online on Super Bowl Sunday, the most common reason was to monitor stats and stories related to the game (17%), followed by looking for recipe and party ideas (16 %). Super Bowl ads will also drive viewers to the Web, with 16% of respondents saying they would go online to visit the Web sites of Super Bowl advertisers, while 13% said they intended to watch Super Bowl ads or video clips online.

Video streams at broadcast network TV Web sites were nearly two times more likely to be viewed by women age 18-34 than men, who accounted for 22% and 12% of streams, respectively. For the top four Consumer Generated Media Web sites, streams were two and a half times more likely to be viewed by men 18-34 than women, who accounted for 27% and 11% of streams, respectively.

In 2007 commercial and nonprofit marketers spent $173.2 bln on direct marketing in US, according to Direct Marketing Association. Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures generated approximately $2.025 trln in incremental sales. In 2007, direct marketing accounted for 10.2% of total US gross domestic product. Also in 2007, there were 1.6 million direct marketing employees in the US. Their collective sales efforts directly supported nearly 9.0 mln other jobs, accounting for a total of 10.6 mln US jobs.

The top video site in December 2007 was YouTube, with 2.6 bln streams during the month, followed by Yahoo! with 371.9 mln streams and Fox Interactive Media with 364.1 mln streams

61% of Canadians indicate that if given the choice, they’d rather look at the ads in at newspaper than watch advertisements on TV, according to Canadian Newspaper Association.

US retail sales of non-games software totaled $3.3 bln in 2007, a 15% increase over the $2.9 bln generated in 2006. Thanks in large part to new product introductions from companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Adobe, the most significant increases in revenue were seen in operating system, business, finance and imaging/graphics software categories, which posted respective dollar sales increases of 58%, 41%, 13% and 10%, respectively, over 2006. Losses were posted in personal productivity and education categories, which experienced respective dollar declines of 18% and 17% over the same time period. Despite flat sales in the overall system utilities category, security software dollar volume is up 16% for the year, driven primarily by a 55% increase in the security suite software category. The top four publishers of security suite software, Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and Microsoft, all experienced YTY dollar volume gains in 2007. According to NPD, Microsoft Office, in particular, generated strong sales in retail in 2007. The Office suite accounted for 17% of all dollar volume in the US retail PC software market, and Office 2007 unit sales experienced year YTY growth of 50%.

iSuppli listed top plasma TV vendors in Q4 2007.

According to a survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project, in February-March 2007 56% of respondents reported sending email every day. 50% of the respondents stated they first went online for “personal” reasons; 31% said work was the cause; 19% said school was the cause.

Albanian IT market reached nearly $44 mln in 2006, up an estimated 18% over 2005. IT market to expand by 17.8% annually on average to total almost $100 million in 2011, according to IDC. Albanian IT market is heavily oriented towards hardware, which constituted over 71% of total IT spending in 2006. IT services represented just over 16% of the market, and software represented 12.6%.