Q1 2012
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Olympus hangs $57 million loss on austerity, strong yen and declining compact camera market
Olympus is reporting a $56.7 million loss for its first quarter of 2012. While its coveted medical imaging arm remains profitable, its life-science and industrial unit suffered thanks to corporate belt-tightening. Unsurprisingly, its low-end compact camera market is shrinking, but sales of its OM-D E-M5 ILC increased by 50 percent, offsetting some of the losses and reducing operating losses from $89 million last quarter to $19 million in this one. Like many of its Japanese rivals, it's also found a strong yen has stifled its return to productivity, a trend that isn't likely to change soon.
Akamai: peak internet speeds jumped 25 percent year-to-year in Q1, Germany tops the mobile world
If you thought world internet access speeds were facing a large-scale slowdown, you can stop fretting for now. Data from Akamai suggests that average speeds were just 2.6Mbps, but that was a healthy 14 percent improvement over the fall and a noticeable 25 percent better than early 2011. Average peak internet connection speeds surged just as much in the first quarter of this year: at 13.5Mbps, the average maximum was a 10 percent season-to-season boost and that same 25 percent versus a year before. The leaders remain Asian territories with that ideal mix of dense populations and high technology, culminating in Hong Kong's blazing 49.3Mbps typical downlink. Akamai attributes much of the growth in peak speeds to an explosion in "high broadband" connections, where 10Mbps is the minimum -- countries like Denmark, Finland, South Korea, Switzerland and the US roughly doubled their adoption of extra-fast access in the past year. Before cheering too loudly, we'd point out that mobile speeds are still trudging along despite HSPA+ and LTE making their presences felt. The most consistent speed came from an unnamed German carrier, which neared 6Mbps; the best regular American rate was 2.5Mbps, which underscores how far even some of the most developed countries have to go. There's also a clear gap in regular landline broadband quality if we go by the US' own National Broadband Plan standards. Just 60 percent of US broadband is over the 4Mbps mark, putting the US at 14th in the global ranks. We're hoping that projects like Google Fiber can raise expectations for everyone, but you can hit the source shortly to get Akamai's full study.
Sony's Q1 2012 results are grim, as gaming division loses $45 million
Sony's downward slide continues in the latest financial report from the Japanese multimedia company. A $312 million loss was recorded in Q1 2012 (April 1 - June 30, 2012) across many of Sony's divisions – music, film, televisions, mobile, cameras, and gaming – with only cameras and music pulling in any profit.But hey, you don't care about cameras and TVs and stuff, right? Sony's gaming division incurred a $45 million loss – Vita's lackluster first year sales apparently weren't enough to counterbalance falling PlayStation 3 and PSP sales.Worse, Sony doesn't see things looking up anytime soon, adjusting its fiscal year outlook downward due to an expected "severe operating environment," financially. "We have downwardly revised our consolidated results forecast for the current fiscal year, anticipating a severe operating environment from the second quarter onward resulting from uncertain foreign exchange rates and trends in the global economy."
Sharp pain continues with $1.2 billion loss in Q1, drastically lowered forecast for 2012
Having already scraped through a disastrous 2011, Sharp had been banking on making a small but significant profit this year. Those hopes have now evaporated, with the Japanese manufacturer's forecast of 20 billion yen ($250 million) in operating earnings for 2012 being revised down to a 100 billion yen ($1.25 billion) loss. That dose of reality is largely the result of the quarter just gone, in which hardly anyone appears to have bought an Aquos TV (despite the 90-incher being pretty amazing) or a Sharp-made LCD panel, and the company made a 94 billion yen ($1.2 billion) loss in the space of just three months. According to Reuters, as many as 5,000 staff may lose their jobs in the company's first major round of lay-offs.
Sony releases Q1 2012 financial results, eats $312 million loss
Sony's first-quarter figures for 2012 show that despite the company's optimism three months ago, it's made a net loss of $312 million. It pulled in a whopping $19.2 billion in sales for the three months ending June 30th, partly credited to bringing Sony Mobile fully into the family. However, the cost of restructuring the Mobile Products and Communications Division (of which Sony Mobile is a part) came to $143 million, wiping out the additional gains to record a loss of $356 million. Gaming-wise, the PlayStation maker suffered a $45 million loss as falling sales of the PSP and PS3 were only partially offset by the sales of the PS Vita. There was better news in its imaging division, while sales of compact cameras fell, DSLRs and "Professional" products took up the slack, resulting in a profit of $160 million. In a trend we've seen across the Home Entertainment industry, sales of LCD televisions continued to fall, forcing the company to eat a loss of $126 million. Movie and TV recorded a loss of $62 million, although that's primarily due to a dip in advertising sales in India and the cost of marketing (but not producing) The Amazing Spider-Man, the profits of which won't be recognized until September. Finally, while it spent big to purchase EMI this quarter, big-ticket albums like Usher's Looking 4 Myself and One Direction's Up All Night helped the division make a profit of $92 million. While Sony's treading water to execute Kaz Hirai's "One" Strategy, it's still got $8.4 billion stashed under the mattress, and in the face of lower sales, is hoping that reduced costs will help it make $1.6 billion in profit by the end of March 2013.
Toshiba slips into the red as latest earnings reveal $153 million loss
Toshiba's most recent fiscal results (the first of its 2012 financial year) show that while the company pulled in $16 billion in turnover, it slumped to a $154 million loss for the last three months. While its "social infrastructure" unit (power plants, LED light bulbs and radiation detectors) generated a $107 million profit, the consumer electronics and white-goods sectors continued to lose sales. The company attributes the loss to further restructuring costs as well as pointing an accusatory digit toward the European financial crisis and concerns about power generation capacity in Japan. Despite the gloom, the company says that it still expects to hit a target of $81 billion turnover and $3.8 billion profit before March 2013.
Huawei 1H 2012: profits dropped 22 percent, still made $1.37 billion
Huawei's financial figures for the first six months of 2012 reveal that the Chinese behemoth brought in turnover of 102.7 billion yuan ($16.08 billion), making a profit of 8.79 billion yuan ($1.37 billion). That's not exactly bad news, but the figure is 22 percent smaller than the same period last year -- leading the company to blame the drop on the global economy and saying that the telecoms business is a "significant challenge." It humbly bragged that it had deployed 38 of the 80 commercial LTE networks worldwide and that the upstart now held over 12 percent of the Chinese smartphone market. It also claimed that the Ascend P1 and Ascend D1 had become bestselling handsets in China, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada -- which might have prompted CFO Ms. Meng Wanzhou to be "optimistic" about the company's performance in the second half of the year.
IDC: Nokia moved just 2.2 million Lumias this winter, but stay tuned
Although we know that Nokia had a wince-inducing first quarter, the company was hush hush on how many of its Windows Phone-packing Lumias had shipped out. We still don't have official word, but IDC estimates that Nokia delivered 2.2 million of the devices to shops (not necessarily to customers) between January and March. If the total is accurate, Lumias would represent less than a fifth of the 11.9 million smartphones shipped by Espoo over the season and wouldn't have Apple or Samsung quaking in their boots just yet. The research team is careful to warn that the spring and summer will be the real litmus tests: a healthy Lumia 900 launch in the US could easily spike that number. Our one certainty is that Nokia will still have to sell a lot of 808 PureViews if it wants to keep its smartphone sales humming in the short term.
Apple lords over tab market in Q1 2012, Samsung bumps Kindle in scuffle for scraps
If it's the end of a financial quarter, there must be another chronicle of the iPad swelling Apple's money pile and its tablet competitors trying in vain to chip off more for themselves. And with 11.8 million shipped by Cupertino out of 18.2 million slates total, that's pretty much the case -- with a minor shuffle of those "other guys" the only other tidbit. To wit, Amazon's Kindle petered into third spot only a quarter after trumpeting its ascension to number two, and Samsung displaced it as distant runner-up with sales of 1.1 million tabs. The most wide-eyed in the Korean maker's camp might point to Apple being topped in the rate of 3G / 4G tablets sold, but with eight times the sales of WiFi models, we doubt Apple's number-crunchers are losing any sleep over it. Per usual, the full report can be seen in the source link.
NPD Q1 2012: Apple still king of the mobile computing hill thanks to iPad
NPD DisplaySearch is declaring Apple to be the undisputed champion of the mobile PC business for the first quarter of the year. The fruity phone flinger shipped (shipped, not sold) 17.2 million mobile PCs in the time, a figure that contentiously includes the iPad. Second place was taken by HP, which packed off 8.9 million units -- enough to put it at the top of the Laptop-only chart. It's a familiar story over on the tablets leader-board, too. Cupertino pushed out 13.6 million iPads to maintain first place, while Samsung took the silver medal after packing off 1.6 million of its numerous Galaxy slates. Surprisingly, Amazon only needed to ship 900,000 Kindle Fires to take third, although given that the bookseller never discloses its numbers, we have to take that last number with a dash of disbelief.
Gartner: mobile phone sales fell two percent last quarter, Samsung confirmed as numero uno
Gartner's latest dispatch reveals a wobbly global trade in mobile phones. Although our love of smartphones continued to blossom, with sales of that subcategory up nearly 45 percent, it wasn't enough to stave off a two percent overall decline compared to the same quarter in 2011. A total of 419.1 million handsets were sold, representing the first hiccup after nearly three years of growth and leading analysts to point fingers at a slow down in the Asia / Pacific region as well as a lack of product launches at the start of the year. Meanwhile, these figures also confirm what was already gleaned from IDC's shipments data: Samsung has knocked Nokia off its 14-year-old perch to become the padrone of the mobile phone market, with a cut of over 20 percent. It also replaced Apple as the number one smartphone vendor, claiming ownership of almost half of that segment. Damn, it feels good to be a pebble.
T-Mobile reports customer growth for Q1 2012, tries not to think about Q4 2011
T-Mobile USA took a bit of a hit back in Q4, following its failed merger with Ma Bell, but things are looking up for the magenta network. It still took a 2.8 percent hit in terms of raw revenues, taking in $5 billion including service and equipment sales, but it's still proud to report a net growth of 187,000 customers and diminishing reports of customer losses when compared to previous quarters. T-Mobile's branded net customer loss of 510,000 marks a 28-percent improvement over its 706,000 Q4 loss, and is bolstered by a 13 percent increase in prepaid customers, totaling 249,000. The firm blames its previous quarter contract losses on the widespread availability of the iPhone 4S on its competitors' networks. It's also assuring investors that its lauded 4G rollout is still underway, and noted that it has signed agreements with Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Network to upgrade 37,000 cell sites with LTE hardware over the next two years. The company hopes a brand relaunch (and the availability of handsets like the Galaxy S Blaze 4G, Nokia Lumia 710, and HTC One S) will drive customers to the high-speed network as it fills out over 2012 and 2013. Hit the break for all of the financially riveting details.
Activision Blizzard Q1 2012 financials: $1.17 billion in net revenue, down year-over-year
Activision Blizzard has released its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2012, posting total net revenue (pre-tax income) of $1.17 billion for the period ending on March 31, 2012. This is a 23 percent drop over the same period in 2011, where Activision Blizzard posted a net revenue of $1.44 billion. Net income (post-tax/expenses profit) was also down year over year, with the pub/dev reporting a remainder of $384 million for Q1 2012, as compared with $503 million in Q1 2011.Breaking that down a little more specifically, Activision itself was responsible for 23 percent ($271 million) of segment net revenues, down 19 percent form the $323 million it was responsible for in 2011. Blizzard accounted for 21 percent ($251 million) of segmented net revenues, down 42 percent year-over-year vs. the $357 million it posted for Q1 2011.Many of Activision and Blizzard's major releases are still pending, including Diablo 3, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Looking forward, Activision Blizzard expects to report a "record" non-GAAP Q2 net revenue of $805 million due to Prototype 2, Amazing Spider Man and Diablo 3. As for the rest of the year, the company expects to end fiscal 2012 to the tune of $4.2 billion in net revenue.
Toshiba made $898.8 million profit, could manage to lend you twenty bucks
Toshiba isn't going with the flow this financial season, bucking the trend and posting a healthy (albeit reduced) net profit of 73.7 billion yen ($898.8 million). Whilst down from $1.7 billion in 2010, the company points to the European debt crisis, Japanese Earthquake and high oil prices as the barriers to further success. Unlike its local rivals, Tosh branched out early into "social infrastructure," building everything from radiation detectors, power plants and LED light bulbs -- businesses that made a stack of cash while its computer and TV businesses slumped. Unencumbered by these crises in the future, the company is projecting to make $1.68 billion across the next 12 months -- at which point it might treat itself to a spa day, or something.
IDC: Apple makes big gains in tablet market, Android stumbles
Research firm IDC predicted there would be a steep drop off in tablet shipments during Q1 of 2012. Following the surge of sales during the holiday season, a fall of 34 percent, while certainly staggering, is hardly surprising. But there's bad news: shipments failed to meet even those bleak predictions. Shipments fell by 38.4 percent, thanks in large part to Android slates stumbling dramatically. After a reasonably impressive holiday season, IDC expected Android would continue to make inroads in the market. Instead, the number of units moved dropped drastically, allowing Apple to not just maintain its position at the top of the heap, but assert an unquestionable dominance not seen since the early days of Honeycomb. After accounting for 54.7 percent of all tablet shipments in Q4 of 2011, the iPad opened up an impressive lead, claiming 68 percent of the market in Q1 of 2012. What's more, after catapulting to the number two spot by shipping 4.8 million units at the end of last year, Amazon fell to number three -- accounting for only 4 percent of tablets shipped, a precipitous fall from 16.8 percent last quarter. That's good news for Samsung, however, which reclaimed its place as first runner up slate wars. For more, check out the PR after the break.
Motorola Mobility loses $86 million in Q1, device shipments way down
Well, the first quarter of 2012 is officially over Motorola Mobility, and the financial news is rather sobering for the company. While revenues were up, the climb was modest, to just $3.1 billion. And that small bump in incoming cash was not enough to stave off another quarter of loses. In fact, after losing $80 million in Q4 of 2011, Moto lost $86 million in Q1 of 2012. The company continued to bleed cash in large part because shipments of mobile devices dropped off dramatically. Only 8.9 million devices were shipped in the quarter, down from 10.5 million in the last part of 2011. With 5.1 million of those being smartphones however, the phone division did manage to increase revenues by three percent. The one bright spot was the home segment which, thanks to its home gateways and broadcast goods, managed to make (that's right, not lose) $68 million, up from $53 million a year ago. For more numbers and charts check out the source link.
IDC crowns Samsung the biggest phone maker by shipments for Q1 2012
Research firm IDC is reporting that Nokia has been dethroned as the world's biggest phone maker by Samsung. In the first quarter of the year, Samsung shipped 98.3 million mobile phones, with Nokia and Apple in second and third place. In the smartphone-only charts, the Korean company shipped 42.2 million of its Android and Windows Phone handsets, while Cupertino shipped 35.1 million and Nokia shipped a paltry-by-comparison 11.9 million. Samsung, Apple and companies outside the top 5 all made big gains in the smartphone space, while Nokia, RIM and HTC all felt their numbers drop. Unsurprisingly, companies with big stakes in dumb phones suffered, with Nokia and LG losing big chunks of their market share to the big two and stalking horse ZTE, which has bested LG for fourth place. After the break, we've got the official tallies that you can pore over.
Mobile Miscellany: week of April 23rd, 2012
Not all mobile news is destined for the front page, but if you're like us and really want to know what's going on, then you've come to the right place. This past week, we learned that ZTE intends to release a phablet of its own, and Samsung unseated Nokia as the world's largest supplier of mobile phones. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of April 23rd, 2012.
Canon reports slightly higher profits in Q1, teases new compact cameras on the way
Canon reported its Q1 2012 earnings this week, and things certainly appear to have gone better than the last time we checked in when it replaced the company president. While revenue declined slightly, net profit reached 61.54 billion yen ($766 million), up 11 percent from a year ago. There's no executive moves to report, however on the earnings call executive VP and CFO Toshizo Tanaka noted a unit sales increase of 30 percent for SLR cameras including the new EOS 5D Mark III as well as the cheaper T3i, Mark II and 60D models, combined with strong sales for WiFi-connected point-and-shoots. As far as new products, while its new cinema cameras got a glancing mention the plan this year includes compact cameras "offering the image qualities that approaches SLR cameras", with improved design and network connectivity features. All the numbers and earnings call talk are in black and white at the links below, although we prefer to spend our time speculating about the future of mirrorless cameras.
Samsung's Q1 2012 profits nearly double year-over-year on higher margins for TVs and phones
The numbers for Samsung's first quarter of 2012 are in and as it expected they are up sharply over the same period from 2011. After predicting profits of 5.8 trillion won it managed to top that, notching an operating profit of 5.85 trillion won ($5.16 billion US) for the quarter, a 98 percent gain over a year ago. Phones accounted for 73 percent of the profit, contributing 4.27 trillion won to the bottom line. As the world awaits the debut of what we assume will be the Samsung Galaxy S III May 3rd powered by its Exynos 4 Quad CPU, there's clearly no shortage of demand for the Galaxy S II and Note. Sales of chips and TVs decreased from last quarter, but like its competitor LG, growing sales of high res tablet panels (we wonder which one that might be), 3DTVs and OLEDs increased profitability. Specifically, the high end 7000/8000 series of HDTVs increased sales by 50 percent from last year, while the company plans to focus on "region-specific" LED models for emerging markets, and high end (and high priced) flat-panels for developed markets. We're listening in to the earnings call at the moment, and we'll let you know if there's any other details that come out of what is mostly boring numbers talk. So far it's all pretty businessy, although in response to a question executives did confirm that they expect the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note to occupy different segments in terms of size. So there you have it -- the Galaxy S III will (shockingly) not have a 5.3-inch screen. Also, it predictably is trying to continue the trend of global launches, although that hardly puts to rest the issue of how long we may end up waiting for carrier-specific versions here in the US. Check out the rest of Samsung's details in a press release and a few slides from the report embedded after the break.
