Tag: juniper

Free games to lead app downloads

Posted on July 2, 2013 by - News

dandroidFree to play games are set to drive app ecosystems, leading the charge of the 160 billion plus consumer apps Juniper Research expects to be downloaded by 2017.

In Juniper Research’s report, Future App Stores: Discovery, Monetisation & Ecosystem Analysis 2013 – 2018, the analyst house found the majority of downloads will be in the games category. 40 percent or more downloads are expected to come from this segment.

We can expect an increase in social network functions in these games – not only in terms of leaderboards but to promote the apps themselves.

But developers are still working out the kinks when it comes to monetisation. There is a downward pressure on pricing which often means paid-for apps need to be enormous hits to get the pay-off from investment. This will, Juniper thinks, lead to more free to play games as it becomes the most popular option at the point of download among consumers.

The app store model itself, according to Juniper, has already cut out network operators from grabbing their share of the profit.

Report author Siân Rowlands said that it’s still possible to squeeze cash from customers through carrier billing, which can be popular for customers without a bank account. “However, operators must realise they won’t see as great a revenue share as they did during the pre-app store era,” Rowlands said.

It’s predicted that just five percent of apps will be paid for at the point of download in 2017 – less than 6.1 percent this year.

Smartphones drive trend for app-connected cars

Posted on March 20, 2013 by - News

beetle App-Connected vehicles could reach 20 percent of consumer cars in Western Europe and North America by 2017, research has suggested.

In its latest report into this sector, Juniper Research said the trend will be driven by new standards, stereos, head units and high smartphone ownership, which could fuel around 90 million connected cars within the next five years.

It added that the success of new standards such as MirrorLink will be instrumental in creating the foundations for the connected car ecosystem to flourish.

Although traditional embedded telematic services will go some way to pushing this trend, Juniper said that smartphone tethering and  in-vehicle Apps would be the key drivers, and have a knock on effect on the price of vehicle manufacturers’ own embedded telematics infotainment services.

“Sky-high smartphone ownership and a standardised approach to integrating apps into the vehicle head-unit mean that the barriers to making the connected car a reality have all but gone,” said the report’s author Anthony Cox.

However he pointed out that there would be negative factors holding back the growth and that was slow development of the new vehicle market in developed economies.

Juniper Networks mulls its future

Posted on February 27, 2013 by - News

JuniperBerriesJuniper Networks is pondering its future after talks to try to sell its assets last year fell through.

According to Reuters , a cunning plan is being hatched up which could see it buying more companies to bolster the security and enterprise business, with a longer-term view of a sale or spin-off.

Last year, Juniper contacted about half a dozen competitors to see if any of them wanted its assets that handle networking for enterprise clients.
There was some talk that storage provider EMC was going to buy the outfit, however, EMC CEO Joe Tucci ruled that out.

One of the assets pitched was NetScreen, a maker of firewall technology that Juniper bought in 2004 for $4 billion.  No one was interested because Juniper’s enterprise-oriented assets were a little elderly.

When asked at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona if he was going to sell NetScreen or other parts of the business, chief executive Kevin Johnson said he was a buyer not a seller.

He added that the enterprise business, which was only focused on security five years ago, had since grown into switching and routing.

But Juniper made a mistake in that it focused on its core business of wiring service providers such as mobile carriers.  This resulted in it spreading itself too thin.  Then it developed products which came out late and were buggy.

Reuters said the company had problems in that some of its investors moaning that it did not want Juniper buying more security products.
It said that Juniper was undertaking a “soul-searching” to claw back market share as a pure play vendor for service providers.

So far it has not come up with anything and it is tricky to do much when your share price is lagging.

It is probably kicking itself for not hearing the voice of one of its top NetScreen executives, Nir Zuk.  Zuk had tried to get the outfit to build a new-generation firewall, but he was ignored.  He left to co-found security startup Palo Alto Networks, which has since taken market share from larger rivals in the $17 billion network security market.

Something has to be done fast.  In the fourth quarter of 2012, Juniper’s enterprise revenues were down 10 percent from last year.