There’s lots happening in the world of ecommerce development, mobile technology and social media advertising right now. Billions are being invested, made and lost.
Here’s just a few major companies that you should be keeping a close watch on over the course of the coming year.
Flipkart
Binny and Sachin Bansal started Flipkart back in 2007. To say they’re the largest ecommerce store in India would be a serious understatement. The company just received $1 billion in investor funding, based on a whopping $7 billion valuation! (source)
They started out selling only books on their site. And much like Amazon’s rise; they’ve grown into selling electronics, accessories, clothing, housewares, and even recently ventured into the mobile market – releasing their own signature mobile phablet: the Digiflip Pro XT 712. Along with a signature wireless Internet router: the Digiflip WR001.
Flipkart’s growth appears to be to Amazon’s detriment, as the American company just launched into India last year. Quite likely a too-little too-late type of situation for Amazon since Flipkart has a firm hold on the Indian ecommerce marketplace and will be using their recently-gained investor capital to build their product line, while expanding their reach into North America by the end of this year. They also have plans to continue investing in (and absorbing) other product and service businesses.
Samsung Electronics
Samsung wants to take over as the biggest and baddest in the home, office and mobile tech-development space. As part of their one-year plan, they’ll be building a 1.1 million-square-foot, $300-million R&D laboratory in San Jose (part of “Silicon Valley.”)
The company sees innovation, particularly in the mobile market, as going stale and want to leap-frog to the top of World’s Most Innovative Companies list – they’re currently 3rd under Apple and Google (1st and 2nd respectively.) Samsung sees the popularity of their Galaxy smartphone lineup as quickly-dwindling and want to be as proactive as possible about securing their #9 spot on the Most Profitable Corporations List.
Bob Brennan, current VP of the company’s Memory System Application Laboratory, has said the new lab is a strategic move on Samsung’s part, to put the company smack dab in the middle of the “technology pulse” – i.e., the area where the majority of world-wide tech startups are located, and a place where creative techies naturally flock to.
With 500 researchers currently employed in Silicon Valley alone and projections set at a 20 – 30% workforce increase in the coming year, watch out for plenty of mobile innovation, employment opportunities, and increasing stock values from these guys!
GoPro
GoPro is a huge name in consumer electronics. Their Hero lineup of portable, ultra compact digital video cameras are used by everyone from doting parents to extreme sports enthusiasts – in over 100 countries worldwide! They sold close to $14 million of their portable HD cameras in 2013. At $200 – $500 a pop, profits are easy for this company to acquire.
GoPro just went public at the end of June 2013 with a $3-billion IPO (see NASDAQ) and their stock value has already risen 75% (learn more) since then! The public offering has more than doubled their value too, with current valuations at around the $5-billion mark!
With the recent public funding, GoPro is looking to expand and be more than just a mobile cam company. They’ve ironed out a deal with Microsoft to have a GoPro Channel on Xbox Live and have ambitious plans to monetize the GoPro Network; a cash-cow that’s just waiting to be exploited.
Another company that’s recently gone public is the ever-popular social network, Twitter. There are many “whys” as to reasons to watch out for them in the coming months. While Facebook is much larger in terms of users (1.32 billion monthly users on FB; versus 271 million monthly users on Twitter) – Twitter is quickly expanding its global reach.
Just in Asia alone, Twitter users are expected to grow by 33% by the end of 2014. Total North American users are expected to expand by 25% at the current rate they’re going. There’s similar data to suggest 25% and higher improvements in many other nations.
Second-quarter earnings were recently released, showing a 129% increase in revenue over the same period in 2013. Don’t take these numbers to mean there’s a “profit” here; they’re actually still losing approximately a penny per share currently (see WSJ). The key thing to watch out for is that Twitter’s smashing most of its projection numbers, including earnings ($312 million versus $284 projected); monthly users (271 million versus 267 projected), and a record 500 million tweets reported every day.
The company plans to move well beyond the mobile space, expanding its user data companies and getting deeper into mobile app development.
Keep Your Eye on Flipkart!
Flipkart is a major company to watch out for. Though much of the projections about them are largely speculative, it isn’t out of the realm of possibilty to imagine they can overtake Amazon here in North America and beyond in the coming years.
Heck, all it would take is continued innovation and product expansion, while continuing to gain public trust!
Photo credits: Ashwin Casmir, Karlis Dambrans, Warren R.M. Stuart, Scott Beale