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RIM posts Q2 earnings: $2.87 billion in revenue, softer $235 million loss
RIM may have given us hope that its transition to BlackBerry 10 has turned a corner, but that doesn't mean the dark clouds have entirely broken just yet. The company's second fiscal quarter saw it generate $2.9 billion in revenue, a slight gain over last quarter, while it posted a net loss of $235 million -- again better than expected, but not the best news it could deliver. Waterloo's main challenge was holding on to its smartphone base. While RIM did expand the total BlackBerry user base to 80 million, its phone shipments dropped from 7.8 million to 7.4 million and were braced by shipments of just 130,000 PlayBooks, or half as many tablets as were delivered in the spring. The sunshine is mostly found in the total picture. RIM says it's still on track to deliver the first BlackBerry 10 phones in early 2013; while the smartphone maker is bracing for an operating loss in its ongoing third quarter, the higher revenue and reduced losses suggest to CEO Thorsten Heins that RIM is getting its fiscal house in order before BlackBerry 10 (hopefully) renews interest. Full details of the company's financial performance are available after the break.
Nielsen has Android near 52 percent of US smartphone share in Q2, iPhone ekes out gains
If there was doubt as to whether or not Android would soon become the majority smartphone platform in the US, that's just been erased by Nielsen. Google crossed the tipping point in the second quarter after getting close in the winter, with 51.8 percent of current smartphone users running some variant on the green robot's OS. As we've seen in the past, though, the increase is coming mostly at the expenses of platforms already being squeezed to within an inch of their lives, such as the BlackBerry (8.1 percent) and Windows (4.3 percent combined). Apple still isn't in a position to fret: it kept climbing to 34.3 percent and swung the attention of recent buyers just slightly back in its direction. The real question for many of us might center on what happens in a summer where Samsung has thrown a Galaxy S III-sized curveball at Americans and any new iPhone is likely still a few months away.
Motorola Mobility reports $56 million net loss in Q2, $3.3 billion in revenue, Bionic debut in September
Back in the last quarter of 2010, Motorola Mobility predicted a rocky road for future business, and its Q2 earnings seem to be right on track. The company reported total net revenues of $3.3 billion in the second quarter, up 28 percent year-over-year, but saw a net loss of $56 million, compared to earnings of $80 million in the second quarter of 2010. Mobile Devices saw an operating loss of $85 million, compared to the previous year's earnings of $87 million. Moto's not all doom and gloom however, as it predicts profitability in mobile devices by Q4. In terms of sales, the company reportedly shipped 11 million mobile devices, including 4.4 million smartphones and 440,000 Xoom tablets. Here's hoping Motorola's powers of prediction remain strong.Full PR after the break. We'd heard that the Droid Bionic was "coming soon," but up until today, we still didn't have a firm date for the LTE Android phone. Well, the cat is sort of out of the bag, as Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha has just announced that the long-awaited handset will hit stores in September. When in September is still anyone's guess, but we'll keep you posted as we learn more.
Canon's second quarter profits dip 20 percent amid supply constraints, strong yen
Canon had some good news and some bad (but not unexpected) news in its second quarter earnings released today. On the upside, the company has raised its profit outlook for the rest of the year, and says that the recovery from the earthquake that forced it to halt camera production has been "quicker than expected." That halt to production did take a considerable toll on the company, however, and contributed to a 20 percent drop in net profits to ¥53.86 billion, or $685.7 million, compared to a year ago -- a figure that was compounded by a strong yen that further cut into its earnings overseas. That revised profit outlook comes in part from an updated shipment forecast for interchangeable lens cameras -- it now expects to ship 7.3 million instead of seven million, although its forecast for compact cameras remains unchanged at 20 million. Could that also include a few mirrorless models? Perhaps, although all indications are than an actual release will have to wait until sometime next year.
Samsung's Q2 profit drops 26 percent due to sluggish TV sales, demand for phones explodes
You may or may not have noticed, but we're once again in the thick of earnings season, and today Samsung's in the hot seat. The company has reported that its second-quarter profit fell 26 percent year-over-year to 3.7 trillion won ($3.5 billion), largely thanks to underwhelming sales of flat screen TVs and, to a lesser extent, semiconductors. That's a shade worse than the whiz kids over on Wall Street were expecting, according to Bloomberg. In fact, the demand for televisions was so disappointing that it overshadowed what was actually an impressive quarter for the outfit's mobile division -- sales of feature and smartphones quadrupled year-over-year to 19.2 million units, putting the company on track to further narrow the gap with Nokia, the world's bestselling handset maker. All told, this balanced out to a modest growth in revenue -- an uptick of 2.9 percent to 39 trillion won ($36.7 billion).
Sprint reports $760 million net loss for Q2, slightly less than expected
Well, it looks like Verizon has a bit of company at the negative end of the earnings spectrum -- Sprint has now also reported a loss for the second quarter, although it's a slightly smaller one than expected. Specifically, the company posted a $760 million net loss for the quarter that's just ended, or 15 cents a share, which isn't exactly great, but is better than the 17 cent loss analysts had predicted. That gain is at least partly attributed to strong sales of the HTC EVO 4G, and by the company's best ever year-over-year improvement in net postpaid subscribers, which helped boost the number of wireless subscribers by 110,000 (for a total 48.2 million customers). Looking for some more hard numbers? There's plenty to keep you busy at the link below.
Sprint loses fewer customers in Q2 than expected, but just barely
How does that saying go? For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction, right? Well, to that end, Sprint seems to be the "equal and opposite reaction" to AT&T's and Verizon's actions, posting a net subscriber loss and a stable ARPU at a time when its competitors are posting huge net adds and rising ARPUs. Year over year, The Now Network has hemorrhaged 2.1 million customers, 901,000 of whom bolted in this quarter alone in a $344 million vat of red ink; what's worse, it says losses will increase in the next due to a "seasonal uptick in churn." That doesn't really compute, unless Sprint is actively suggesting that people are more likely to leave its network in the third quarter of the year -- but we obviously understand the need to come up with interesting and creative excuses for bad news when it comes to an ugly earnings report. Any way you slice it, the big boys seem to be eating Sprint's lunch at the moment without a clear-cut path to turning the tables. The silver lining, we guess, is that analysts had expected 906,000 customers to bolt, a full 5,000 more than actually left -- but unless those 5,000 are each holding $1 million-per-month accounts, there's not much of a diff there.[Via mocoNews]
