Q1 2014 Online & Mobile Industry Trends

Q1 2014 Online & Mobile Industry Trends Report

Online & Mobile transaction volume increased five percent over the past three months, from 568 to 596. Deal value rose 63 percent, from $26.5 billion to $43.3 billion. This was the peak for both volume and value throughout the past five quarters. If Facebook’s $16 billion acquisition of mobile application Whatsapp is excluded, aggregate deal value still would have gained three percent compared to Q4 2013 and tripled relative to Q1 2013.

Although the smallest sector in terms of volume, four of the industry’s top ten highest value deals in Q1 2014 occurred in the Communications segment. In addition to Whatsapp, this included VMware’s acquisition of AirWatch for $1.2 billion and Rakuten’s acquisition of Viber for $900 million. The AirWatch transaction was the largest deal in the mobile device management (MDM) subsector since Citrix’s acquisition of Zenprise for $327 million in 2012.

As for the E-Marketing & Search segment, transaction activity increased 16 percent in Q1 2014. Oracle’s acquisition of Blue Kai for $400 million and Comcast Corporation’s acquisition of Freewheel for $360 million were two notable deals in the segment that pertained to advertising software and data management.

SaaS & Cloud transaction volume improved nine percent on a quarter-to-quarter basis. This followed a 15 percent decline between Q3 2013 and Q4 2013. Meanwhile, the E-Commerce segment experienced a seven percent volume increase in Q1 2014.

At the same time, the number of transactions in the mobile application subsector rose from 104 to 113. Deals pertaining to consumer mobile applications increased from 56 to 61.