research

Despite new credit-card law brings some relief, the problems still arise.

It’s known, credit-card holders mostly benefited from the landmark Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act that initially went into effect a year ago. However, some troubling trends that are emerging could mean higher costs for consumers.

According to the latest, study from Confused.com, every year Britons waste £150 million on late payment credit card charges.

The research thus found, that over 25% credit card holders have been charged at least once in the last 12 months for late payment.

According to the latest estimation from the Commerce Department, US retail sales, that account for about half of total consumer spending and about a third of final sales in the US economy, dropped 0.5% in June to a seasonally adjusted $360.2 billion that reflects the economy to slow down slightly. 

As the latest research published by the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) showed, online subscription will generate up to 24% of new business sales for magazines this year. 

According to the latest research from app store analytics provider Distimo, over 50% of mobile apps are priced below or equal to $2 in Android Market, Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPad, Nokia’s Ovi Store and Palm’s App Catalog.

The exceptions to the rule are BlackBerry App World (which doesn’t allow apps priced below $2.99) and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

According to the latest research conducted by Forrester Research and Shop.org, increasing popularity of mobile applications among consumers is driving online retailers to speed up their mobile marketing initiatives.

Thus far, almost 75% of online merchants currently have or are developing a mobile strategy. At the same time, 20% have a mobile strategy already settled.

According to a new study conducted by the research company Morpace, retailers and businesses are getting a chance to use social media to reach their target market as about one-third of their online time users spend on Facebook. 

The largest study, conducted by British scientists amid 7,000 children and patterns of early childhood cancers across Britain, defined that living close to a cell phone mast does not increase the risk of a pregnant woman's baby developing cancer.

As reflected the latest research from IDC, global PC sales are expected to face nearly 20% growth this year.

As the research firm found, worldwide PC shipments in the first three months of the year were 27.1% higher than in the first quarter of 2009. So the company expects further growth nearing to 20% compared to 2009.

As IDC noted an easing of economic troubles together with renewed consumer and corporate buying is giving the PC industry a much-needed boost.

According to a new online poll conducted by YouGov among 6200 adults, about 32% of British notebook computers have been swiped from homes.

This data can be compared to UK’s European neighbours France and Germany, where the numbers were 22% and 17%, respectively.

As the pollster added, the proportion of recent laptop thefts that took place in US and Canada homes were only 18% and 17%, respectively.

Still, these figures also show that you're more likely to lose your laptop while it's out and about with you.

According to the latest report from Internet Identity security company (IID), text-to-phone phishing attacks decreased considerably in the first quarter of the current year. Thus, these attacks have dropped by 62% from the previous quarter.

It’s well known that enormous amount of Americans have ever tried online dating. Thus, 40 million Americans have tried online dating, and the industry is now valued at over $1 billion, that seems to be even bigger than porn.

Well, some cnbc’s researcher decided to find out the most unusual dating websites as online dating has been one of the great success stories of the internet.

Baidu, China’s leading search engine, unveiled its intention to raise its share of China's PC and mobile search market to 79% by 2011.

Baidu captured over 64% of national search market in the first quarter of 2010, that is up from 58.4% in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Analysys International.

Tuesday, during a news conference Baidu General Manager for Corporate Development Tang Hesong made the comments over the deal to reporters.

 

PC sales have surged by 23% compared to last year, pushed mainly by growing demand in Asia. 

Thus, if in the first quarter of last year 66.5 million PCs were shipped, the first quarter of 2010 showed 81.5 million sales.

According to the latest report from eMarketer, online retailers tend to be some of the biggest beneficiaries of social network users who friend or follow corporate pages.