Netflix dominates streaming market, says Nielsen; SaaS content security ramps up

Consumes like their Netflix: While there are a number of options for consumers to get streaming video, a new Nielsen study illustrates that Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) is the dominant provider. A survey revealed that 38 percent of Americans said they use Netflix, while 18 percent use Hulu and 13 percent stream on Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). One of the other insights that came out of the study was that 88 percent of Netflix users watched three or more episodes of a TV show in a single day, and 45 percent said they watch original series, such as Netflix's Emmy-nominated House of Cards, on streaming services. Also, 48 percent of Netflix users watch on a computer screen; 23 percent watch on a smartphone (up from 11 percent); and 15 percent watch on their iPad, up from only 5 percent in 2012. However, the percentage of users who reported using Roku or Nintendo's Wii game console dropped this year. Article

Europe becomes global Internet hub: International Internet bandwidth and traffic may be slowing down, but according to TeleGeography, Europe is emerging as a global Internet hub. In 2013, growth in worldwide international Internet capacity declined to 33 percent from 63 percent in 2009. Despite the slowdown, Internet backbone providers added 26 Tbps of international Internet bandwidth to their networks, which is more than the total amount of capacity in service globally in 2009. During this period, international Internet capacity connected to Europe rose 18.5 Tbps in 2013, growing most rapidly between Europe and Africa. TeleGeography said Europe now accounts for 94 percent of international Internet bandwidth connected to North Africa, up from 61 percent ten years ago, and 72 percent of bandwidth connected to Sub-Saharan Africa, up from 39 percent a decade ago. Article

SaaS shows potential: The content security market may be on the decline, but a recent Infonetics study forecasts that the SaaS segment will grow to over $1 billion by 2017. The global content security gateway appliance and software market declined 1.4 percent between 1Q13 and 2Q13, to $689 million. Blue Coat led the content security gateway market from a revenue market share perspective, followed by Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), McAfee, Symantec and Websense. However, in the emerging SaaS segment, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) takes an early lead, with Symantec, McAfee, Cisco and Proofpoint also positioning well during the second quarter. Release