Sony Ericsson warned the world just over a fortnight ago that things wouldn't be too rosy when it came time to announce Q2 results, and rosy things are not. Even though the handset maker was hoping and praying to break even at the end of the quarter, net profits ended up falling through the floor to the tune of 97%. As predicted, weak sales of mid-to-high-end mobiles were blamed for the bulk of the bad news, and it did affirm that conditions would remain rough for the rest of the year. Granted, the looming launch of the Xperia X1 should help matters a bit, but without a new stable of low-end cellies to send to emerging markets, it'll be a long road back to the top. Unfortunately, SE's sagging position in the market has left it slashing 2,000 jobs across the globe, though it didn't say exactly where the cuts would be made. It's okay SE, there's only one place to go when you're laying on the bottom... or something like that.

[Image courtesy of Flickr]

Read - Sony Ericsson's Q2 earnings
Read - Sony Ericsson plans job cuts

Although Sony Ericsson just churned out a rather impressive array of new handsets this month, it seems the outfit is still having trouble securing record-setting profits. Truthfully, it's struggling to break even, as evidenced by the second profit warning of 2008 that was issued last week. SE is pinpointing "disappointing European sales of its mid- and high-end mobile phones" as the reason it will likely not see a profit in Q2, and some analysts are suggesting that shipment delays and a dearth of low-end handsets also carry a share of the blame. 'Course, the hotly-anticipated Xperia X1 could certainly make for a lovely Q3, but only time will tell if enough folks shell out for it to make a difference.

Here's hoping you own some Verizon stock, readers. According to the company's Q4 '07 earnings call which took place this morning, the massive telco finished out the year on an up note, with a sizable boost in subscribers, and consequently, profit. The company saw a net income boost of 3.9-percent ($1.07 billion, or $.37 a share) year-over-year, and a rise in revenue at 5.5-percent to $23.84 billion, including a 13.3-percent gain (or about 2 million new customers) in wireless sales. Analysts expectations were right on mark with the company's earnings, at $.62 a share, and the company saw growth in both its aforementioned wireless division, as well as big jumps in FiOS users. That's right kids, the rich do get richer.

It seems as if Nokia's not the only mega-corp on the block with good news to proclaim to Wall Street today, as the giant from Redmond is proudly announcing record second quarter results and pinpointing "robust holiday sales and enterprise demand drive" as the culprit. In the three months ending December 31, 2007, Microsoft pulled in some $16.37 billion in revenue and $6.48 billion in operating income, which translated to 30-percent and 87-percent growth in each area, respectively. The outfit also took the chance to mention that sales of Windows Vista had surpassed 100 million licenses, and Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms and Services Division, even noted that it was "looking forward to the release of its first service pack later this quarter." You and just under 100 million others, we'd surmise.

Although it does sound as if the much protested plant closing in Bochum, Germany will indeed leave around 2,300 workers sans a job, the street was still loving what Nokia had to talk about today. In its latest earnings report, the firm announced that it raked in €15.7 billion ($22.76 billion) in revenues and €1.8 billion ($2.6 billion) in net profit from October to December 2007. Furthermore, the firm managed to move a record 133.5 million handsets in the aforementioned period, which is up some 27-percent from Q4 a year earlier. That sales surge enabled the handset maker to grab hold of 40-percent of the global cellphone market, and apparently, bigwigs at the company aren't expecting things to plateau in 2008. Needless to say, things are pretty spirited in Helsinki right about now, so feel free to tag the links below for even more jaw-dropping figures.

Read - Nokia 4Q profits up 44 percent, market share reaches 40 per cent
Read - Nokia's Q4 2007 report

Sony reported its second quarter earnings today, and while the company's overall profits were up, at ¥90.5B ($790M), the Playstation division's losses for the quarter came in at ¥96.7B ($844M), double those of a year ago. Sony says that once it's done accounting for all the recent PS3 inventory changes, it hopes the Playstation division will break even -- potentially in the second half of the fiscal year. Of course, since the PS3 is sold at a loss, the numbers might indicate that Sony's selling more PS3s than ever, but something tells us that's not exactly the plan.

[Via Joystiq]

Sure, Apple's profitability and viability is based on any number of factors, but there's one figure that analysts have been training their calculators on for months that has finally seen the light of day: Apple sold 1,119,000 iPhones in Q4 2007, which ended on September 29th, bringing the grand total to 1,389,000 since launch. That might meet or miss your expectations, but other sales bringing a smile to Jobs' face and a cha-ching to his wallet include a 34% growth in Mac sales year to year and a 17% growth in iPods year to year -- with 10.2 million iPods sold last quarter. The earnings call hasn't started just yet, so hopefully we'll get a few more juicy details on how much AT&T is chipping in to the bottom line these days.

It's already been a rough year for Dell's dwindling market share much to the delight of HP and Apple. Now, as followup to the evidence of accounting errors and misconduct announced back in March, Dell has admitted that their senior / executive management regularly falsified quarterly financial returns from 2003 to 2006. In a filing with the SEC, Dell admits that "account balances were reviewed, sometimes at the request of senior executives, with the goal of seeking adjustments so that quarterly objectives could be met." In only one case did Dell actually invent sales numbers, usually, the shifty accounting involved the recognition of revenue earlier than appropriate. Dell must now reduce its reported net income for the period by as much as $150 million with the biggest downward restatements hitting Q1 2003 and Q2 2004 by 10 to 13 percent -- other quarters are expected to be 5 percent or less. It's unclear whether any of the management responsible for, or engaged in this malfeasance are still employed by Dell. Dell's CFO only said that "disciplinary action had been taken" and that current management and the board are "comfortable we have taken steps necessary to make sure this never happens at Dell again." Dell's stock is actually up a few points in pre-market trading which could be a sign that investors aren't too concerned by the piddley restatement (Dell posted $12 billion in net income during the period in question) and are stoked to see Dell finally move forward, undistracted. That is, if the SEC agrees. We'll see how the stock does once investors wake to the latest fetor to seep outta Austin this side of SXSW.

Sony is reporting that its overall net profits more than doubled during the past quarter, bolstered by the success of films such as Spider-Man 3, and snappy sales of its traditional electronics. Things in the company's PS3 camp, however, still looked a little bleaker than the Japanese giant had probably hoped for. Losses for the game system rose from 26.8 billion yen to 29.2 billion yen, with 710,000 units sold worldwide -- not real impressive when compared to competitor Nintendo's Wii sales of 3.43 million. In a somewhat ironic aside, Nielsen GamePlay Metrics, a division of Nielsen Co. which tracks video game activity, says that the most played game system last month was Sony's seven-year-old PS2. The report shows the aging system leading other consoles with 42 percent of use, followed by the original Xbox at 17 percent, and Xbox 360 at 8 percent. The Wii and PS3 fall at 4 and 1.5 percent, respectively. Should be food for thought for everyone at Sony who doesn't think backwards compatibility is a big deal.

Read -- Sony net profit doubles despite PS3 losses
Read -- PS2 most-played console in June

In a fairly tame show of initiative, Hynix, a South Korean company you've probably never heard of, has announced its plan to become the world's leading chip producer over the next ten years. The company, currently the world's fifth largest memory chipmaker, claims it will boost sales from last year's $7.7 billion to $18 billion in 2010 (the year we make contact), and to $25 billion by 2012 (when the Mayan calendar ends and we're all supposed to eat it). Hynix plans to gain ground by eagerly developing new technologies, and with the introduction of a new type of memory chip called Phase-change Random Access Memory (PRAM, but not of Apple fame). Analysts say PRAM will become the industry's main memory source, replacing flash storage over the next decade. Meanwhile, architects in Korea are working feverishly to design a room in the new Hynix headquarters large enough for president Jong-Kap Kim's head.

While earlier estimates suggested that AT&T would make out like gangbusters considering just how many iPhones it reportedly moved as Q2 came to a close, investors aren't reacting fondly to the firm's latest report. Even though the telco posted a $2.9 billion increase in net income and sales of $29.5 billion, it "only" managed to activate 146,000 iPhones -- which sent Apple's stock tumbling up to 6% (read: billions). Notably, some 40-percent of those iPhone buyers were new to AT&T, which helped to slash customer turnover to a record low, but it's not surprise with previous estimates as high as 1m+ iPhones sold, these numbers didn't exactly impress Wall Street; Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster even went so far as to call the amount of iPhone activations "a disappointment."

Update: We went back and edited this post to present a better sense of what's going on in this story.

[Via mocoNews]

We're sure Verizon's been having a blast with their American exclusivity on the Motorola Q, but the fun and games are about to come to an end -- and another domestic carrier's Windows Mobile-loving customers have cause to celebrate. COO Len Lauer spilled the beans during Sprint's earnings call Thursday, revealing that the company is planning to pick up the honorary RAZR of smartphones (the Q, that is) sometime in the fourth quarter of this year. Speaking of RAZRs, the Moto love continues with a SLVR and RAZR (the V3m, perhaps?) coming down the pike. Between this and the announcement that their Rev. A deployment is ahead of schedule, the good news nearly outweighs the bad stemming from the "earnings" part of the earnings call -- not surprisingly, some analysts are speculating that profits fell short due to Sprint's failure to offer a RAZR thus far.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]