Type of Article: MacTech Blog

The worldwide hardcopy peripherals (HCP) market increased 1.2% year over year to nearly 28.1 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17), according IDC (www.idc.com).

The growth was driven by a solid performance in the inkjet market, which grew 3.3% year-over-year, adds the research group. Shipment value, on the other hand, decreased 1.0% year over year to $13.7 billion in the quarter.

Over one-third of all security incidents start with phishing emails or malicious attachments sent to company employees, according to a new report published by global cyber security company F-Secure (www.f-secure.com).

Twenty-five percent of customer service and support operations will integrate virtual customer assistant (VCA) or chatbot technology across engagement channels by 2020, up from less than two percent in 2017, according to Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com).

Worldwide spending on the technologies that enable smart cities initiatives is forecast to reach $80 billion in 2018, according to the IDC (www.idc.com) research group.

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that the value of consumer spend on remote payments for digital and physical goods will surpass $3.3 trillion this year, up 10% on 2017’s total of $3 trillion.

The research group says alternative payment mechanisms would comprise an ever increasing proportion of online spend. PayPal already accounts for 20% of mobile and online physical goods transactions made outside China, while the success of Alipay and Weixin Pay within China means that these two players combined now account for 45% of global payment volumes.