Menu

Despite signs of a potential market shift in some areas of property insurance, the overall U.S. property, casualty, and financial and professional insurance market remained stable during the first half of 2011 as abundant capacity offset catastrophe losses, according to a new report published today by Marsh.

Almost one-third of people in the U.S. over 13 play mobile games monthly, and the number of gamers in older demographics more than doubled since 2007, according to Parks Associates.

Javelin Strategy & Research announces its latest research report — “Smartphone Banking Security: Mobile Banking Utilization Stalls As Consumers React To Security Issues”. With the explosive growth of smartphone ownership, zooming upwards of 40% since 2010, and constant buzz about such hot new technologies as mobile wallets for payments, financial institutions (FIs) expected that mobile banking growth would continue to skyrocket as well. However, Javelin’s data reveals that mobile banking has actually plateaued. The Javelin report, based on surveys conducted with more than 13,000 consumers, examines this surprising trend, identifies the real reasons why more consumers aren’t using mobile banking, and presents the steps FIs must take if they want to engage more mobile consumers.

Economic uncertainty has resulted in a mixed outlook among IT decision-makers according to the latest CDW IT Monitor. While confidence is on an uptick and spending is showing small gains, budget recovery has been slow.

Median weekly earnings of the nation's 100.6 million full-time wage and salary workers were $753 in the second quarter of 2011 (not seasonally adjusted), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was 1.8 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 3.4 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period.

PriceGrabber®, a part of Experian, just released additional results of its Back-to-School Shopping Forecast survey, revealing that 48 percent of shoppers plan to spend $250 or more on back-to-school purchases, and 25 percent will spend $500 or more. This is a modest decrease from back-to-school budgets in 2010, when 56 percent of consumers indicated that they would spend $250 or more and 31 percent planned to spend $500 or more. Conducted between May 12 and 19, 2011, the survey includes responses from 2,612 U.S. online consumers.

Confidence about current and future prospects for the information technology (IT) industry was overwhelmed by anxiety over the U.S. economy in the latest CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index, the quarterly business barometer published by the non-profit trade association for the IT industry.

PlayFirst® Inc., a leading mobile game publisher, today announced the results of the Magid Media Futures: Mobile 2011 study revealing key insights into mobile computing trends. The study showed the dramatic shift to a ‘smartphone culture’ continues with nearly half of non-smartphone owners considering purchase of a smartphone to replace their cell/feature phone in the next 12 months. The study shows that smartphones continue to redefine traditional phone use with playing games, social networking and accessing the internet being three to five times more prevalent among smartphone owners than traditional cell phone owners.

Despite a sluggish economy, more Americans say they are confident their personal finances will improve during the next 12 months. This trend is translating into more people saving for retirement, according to new research from The Hartford.

Gallup and Healthways, Inc. (NASDAQ: HWAY) today released findings from the monthly Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index® (WBI) for June 2011. The WBI composite score remains relatively high at 66.7; however, healthy behaviors among Americans are lower than they have been in any other June since the WBI was introduced in 2008.