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T-Mobile USA Q2 2012 results show net customer losses of 205k, progress on LTE and AWS
The results for T-Mobile USA's second quarter of 2012 are in and first up is the bad news -- reported net customer losses of 205,000 are more than the 50,000 lost in the same period last year, and more than give back the growth reported in Q1. Of course, the carrier is banking on strategic initiatives to launch LTE service and expand coverage thanks to that AWS spectrum its receiving from AT&T and Verizon (if the deal is approved) to turn all that around, and those plans are still on track. Other high points for the quarter included the launch of Samsung's Galaxy Note and Galaxy S III, as well as a host of other handsets. Also it announced the opening of it's 1,000 T-Mobile Premium Retailer store, started pushing its prepaid and Monthly4G services at Dollar General Stores, launched two new mobile broadband data plans and added two MVNO partners. All the details are in the press release after the break, although it seems that as busy as T-Mobile has been putting pen to paper, investors will have to keep waiting to see the benefits.
NCsoft weathers $6M loss in Q2
NCsoft may have more banking on Guild Wars 2 than once thought. The mega-publisher announced that its second quarter earnings were lower than expected; it posted a $6 million loss for the period. Revenues were down 12% from last year to $130 million, of which a vast majority came from NCsoft's online titles. The company stated that it dipped into the red due to rising labor costs, an increased marketing budget for Blade & Soul's Korean launch, and the acquisition of Ntreev. Aion was also blamed for the company's financial woes, as revenues in that title sharply decreased due to fewer microtransaction sales. Both Lineage titles composed a great share of the company's revenues, with the first game producing 45% of sales and the sequel 13%. NCsoft said that it is banking on Guild Wars 2 to produce a profitable third quarter, however.
IDC: Android and iOS continue to carve up the world, another record quarter for smartphones
According to IDC's latest figures, Android and iOS now account for 85 percent of the 152 million smartphones shipped in Q2 2012. Google's OS powered 68.1 percent of all smartphones sold -- with Samsung making the hardware behind for just under half of those. Apple's smartphones now claim a 16.9 percent marketshare and while plenty of phone shoppers are holding out for the iPhone's next iteration, iOS still saw double-digit growth in Q2. There's more bad news for both BlackBerry and Symbian platforms, which, combined, accounted for less than 10 percent of all smartphones shipped last quarter. Windows Phone 7, meanwhile, hasn't quite made it to that hallowed third place it reckons it deserves. The mobile OS continues to grow, however, albeit at a gentler rate than both iOS and Android. Microsoft's likely pinning its hopes on the adjustable widgets and meatier specifications of Windows Phone 8 to draw in some new customers this fall.
Activision brings in $1.08 billion in Q2: more than expected, but less than last year
Activision Blizzard beat its outlook for its fiscal Q2 (ending June 30), bringing in $1.08 billion in revenue – the outlook as of May predicted $950 million. This still falls short of the same period last year.It's no mystery as to where Activision's money came from. "For the first six months, we had the top three best-selling games in North America and Europe with Activision Publishing's Skylanders Spyro's Adventures and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Blizzard Entertainment's record setting Diablo III," reported Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. In addition, Activision reported $343 million in revenue from its digital channels (WoW subscriptions and Call of Duty maps), representing an impressive 32% of total revenue.
DirecTV waves goodbye to 52,000 subscribers in first ever net loss of customers
Viacom's frenemy, DirecTV, has announced that it suffered a net loss of subscribers for the first time in its history. The revelation came in its second quarter filing, which claimed that the exodus is actually a purge -- due to a tighter credit policy and a change of focus toward "higher quality" customers. The dip in numbers hasn't hurt the balance sheet, however, with revenues up seven percent to $5.65 billion, leading to a net profit of $604 million. This time out, there's no reference to the recently-minted deal to keep Viacom's stations on the service, believed to be in the region of $600 million per year -- but we expect it to appear on the books in the next quarterly report.
Strategy Analytics: Android lost US market share in Q2, isn't losing sleep just yet
Android is most definitely on the upward march when it comes to the world stage. But you might be surprised at how it's faring in the US: it's down, according to Strategy Analytics' estimates. As of the second quarter, Google's market share dropped from 60.6 percent a year earlier to 56.3 percent. No one would call it a moment of crisis for Android, but it implies that Apple was drawing in more of the customers jumping ship from other platforms -- the iPhone climbed to 33.2 percent while RIM and others lost ground. The real tests of where the market is going, we imagine, will come in the second half of the year. Apple will have to survive an American summer full of Galaxy S III variants, while Samsung and the rest of the Android camp may have to cope with a bigger than usual iPhone update as 2012 heads into the sunset.
IDC: Samsung and Apple ship almost half of all smartphones, but Korean manufacturer maintains lead
IDC's latest figures offer some predictable reading. More phones are being sold than ever before; 406 million units were sold in Q2, against 401.8 million in the same period last year -- with a 42 percent increase in smartphone sales. The winners? Perennial court antagonists, Samsung and Apple, with the duo doubling their combined market share over the last two years. Samsung maintains its lead, reaching over 50 million phones sold -- and a new quarterly sales record -- while Apple saw a quarter-over-quarter decline, as buyers presumably wait for Cupertino's latest iteration, or go elsewhere. Nokia, meanwhile, had another "transitional" quarter, with sales of both Symbian and MeeGo devices shrinking, although its Windows Phones proved stronger. According to IDC's figures, Nokia and Microsoft's team-up handset sales have doubled since last quarter. HTC misses out on a top three spot, but its fortunes appear to have improved over the last two quarters, with the IDC pointing the finger at a more streamlined product range from the Taiwan manufacturer. ZTE continues to nip at its heels, reaching the top five thanks to strong entry-level smartphone sales in China, while continuing to inch onto US shores. If you're looking for a full breakdown of all phones sold, dumb and otherwise, read up at the source below.
Facebook posts first earnings as a public company: $1.18 billion in revenue, 955 million users
Facebook revealed its Q1 earnings in an SEC filing leading up to its big IPO earlier this year, but it's now officially out with its first earnings report as a public company. For Q2 of 2012, it brought in $1.18 billion in revenue, up 32 percent year-over-year and slightly better than what analysts were expecting, while GAAP net income sat at a loss of $157 million (down from a profit of $240 million a year ago). Looking at things on a non-GAAP basis, though, net income is actually up from $285 million to $295 million. What's more, the company also confirmed that it has 955 million monthly active users (or what it calls MAUs) as of the end of June, up 29 percent year-over-year. As you can see in the chart after the break, those users are distributed fairly evenly across the world, including 186 million in the US and Canada, 246 million in Europe, 255 million in Asia, and 268 million elsewhere. Daily active users totaled 552 million for the same time period, up 32 percent year-over-year, while mobile users now stand at 543 million, up 67 percent from last year. Not surprisingly, a huge chunk -- 84 percent -- of the company's revenue comes from advertising, which brought in $992 million for the quarter, an increase of 28 percent from last year. That apparently wasn't enough to please investors, though, who have sent the company's stock to a new low of less than $25 (down over ten percent) in after hours trading. Update: Expectedly, the ever-recurring topic of a Facebook phone came up during the Q&A portion of the company's earnings call, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn't avoid the issue entirely. While not completely dismissing recent rumors of an HTC-built, Facebook-branded phone, Zuckerberg did say that building a whole phone "really wouldn't make much sense for us to do," which should put at least a bit of a damper on some of the hype.
Amazon Q2 2012 earnings: net income down 96 percent to $7 million, net sales up 29 percent to $12.83 billion
When internet mega retailer Amazon kicked off its fiscal year this past spring with $13.8 billion in net sales, the prognosis for the quarter ahead was dour, to say the least. At the time, the company projected its Q2 2012 performance would see an operating loss of $40 million to $260 million versus Q2 2011, as well as a slight down tick in revenue at $11.9 billion to $13.3 billion quarter to quarter. Well, the numbers are in and it looks like the forecast was right on the money. The Seattle-based outfit posted $7 million in net income for the quarter, a year over year loss amounting to a whopping 96 percent decrease. As for net sales, that picture's a bit rosier given the 29 percent increase over Q2 2011 that saw the Bezos-backed co. pull in $12.83 billion -- a figure that would have risen to 32 percent were it not for a $272 million hit due to "changes in foreign exchange rates[.]" Operating cash flow for Q2 2012 was down by nearly half at $107MM compared to the same segment last year. Unsurprisingly, the company's budget Kindle Fire tab -- which has enjoyed relatively weak competition up to now -- is still the number one item across Amazon's site, with titles in its Lending Library growing to over 170,000. Bezos also made note of Prime's growth, pegging that subscription offering's catalog of items at 15 million and highlighting the addition of 18,000 movies and TV shows to its streaming service. As for the future, the company expects Q3 net sales to grow by at least 19 percent year-over-year, landing somewhere between $12.9 billion and $14.3 billion, with a projected operating loss of $50 million to $350 million. Hit up the PR after the break for the full load of financial highs and lows.
Sprint's iPhone gamble isn't paying off as 2012 Q2 figures reveal $629 million operating loss
Sprint's second quarter figures have arrived, showing that the company's billion-dollar gamble on the iPhone isn't working right now. While it sold 1.5 million Apple-branded handsets in the three month period (40 percent to new and postpaid customers), it recorded an operating loss of $629 million and a colossal net loss of $1.4 billion -- compared to an operating loss of $255 million and a net loss of $863 million in the first quarter. Operating revenues of $8.8 billion improved on those in the first quarter by a single percent -- mostly due to higher service fees from its wireless offerings. It's also grown its cash reserves, up from $128 million last quarter to $267 million today, and can point to 442,000 postpaid and 141,000 new prepaid subscribers pushing the company's customer base up to 56 million nationwide -- mentioning that 60 percent of former Nextel users chose to remain with Sprint during the enforced change. The figures reveal that Sprint's eating around $782 million due to the shutdown of the Nextel platform and a further $184 million to end leases on antenna sites for the moribund network. It's also having to take a hit of $204 million due to its investment into infrastructure partner Clearwire. It's affirmed its $1 billion lending facility, contingent upon purchasing gear from Ericsson to help build its LTE network, which it aims to have installed in 12,000 sites by the end of the year. Of course, that purchase was prompted by the collapse of Philip Falcone's doomed LightSquared project, which caused the Now Network to lose $66 million in cash and its childhood innocence when it comes to trusting other people. Update: Big Yellow also mentioned that it has no plans to adopt a shared data plan to follow AT&T and Verizon.
Strategy Analytics: iPad keeps riding high in Q2 tablet market share, Android doesn't budge
The Apple iPad may as well be called the Teflon Tablet for now, since challengers can't quite stick. Thanks to those 17 million iPads shipped in the second quarter, Strategy Analytics estimates that Apple held on to the 68 percent of tablet market share that IDC credited to the company in the previous season. That may not sound like a change in the status quo, but it's a significant jump from the 62 percent Apple had a year ago -- and not very good news for anyone else. Android is still holding on at 29.3 percent, although that's slightly underwhelming given the surge of extra devices in that time frame. The real hurt was dished out to Windows 7 tablets and "others" like RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, both of whom were cut down to just 1.2 points of share each in the spring. We'll see if the newer crowd moves the needle for Android in the summer, although the well-received Nexus 7's current scarcity won't help its chances -- and both Microsoft as well as RIM are in holding patterns for the next several months.
Nintendo Q1 results: Wii sales cut in half since 2011, but 3DS sales more than double
Nintendo's results for the latest quarter reveal growth in profit for the Japanese games maker. Gross profit totaled 24.9 billion yen -- more than double that made from last year's Q1. Operating income remains negative, but substantially reduced since last quarter's statement -- presumably due to strong 3DS sales. Today's results tie in with the launch of both the 3DS XL and Nintendo's first downloadable titles for the 3DS, with sales of the handheld reaching 1.86 million units during the last quarter. Conversely, sales of the Wii have tailed off, with only 710,000 units sold in Q1, down from 1.56 million sold in the same period last year. Fortunately, according to the press release, Nintendo still aims to launch its Wii successor by the end of this year.
Canon reports higher profits, lower net income in Q2, points finger at pricey yen
Canon's financial results for Q2 2012 reveal an operating profit 18 percent greater than the results from the same quarter last year. However, net income has dropped from 61.5 billion yen to 51.7 billion yen since last quarter. The company saw demand grow for its DSLRs, both professional and entry-level, while sales of point-and-shoots continued to contract. The ever-increasing value of the yen -- and weakened demand in Europe -- has put a dent in its important overseas sales -- and profits. Perhaps the promise of Canon's first mirrorless ILC later this year will be enough get wallets out in the euro zone.
ARM sees profit surge 23 percent, tests forecasters' patience
Just when financial boffins expected ARM's consistent double-digit growth to slow-down, the company has beaten their projections with a 23 percent rise in pre-tax profit compared to Q2 of last year. It made £66.5 million ($103 million) in profit from £135.5 million ($213 million) in revenue from its numerous mobile and low-power processor design licensees. Analysts expected lower performance for the simple reason that the world's biggest chip-makers have warned of tougher "macroeconomic" times ahead -- rival Intel has been careful to dampen people's hopes for its next quarter, for example, and Qualcomm (a major ARM customer) has also reduced its forecasts. Still, it's all just different shades of rolling in it.
LG Q2 2012 earnings show a loss on cellphones, but higher profits overall thanks to home theater
LG has released its earnings statement for the Q2 2012 period, the claim of "turning a corner" in Q1 has just managed to hold up as it registered net profits of $138 million, up 46 percent from the same period last year. Revenues, while higher than Q1, were actually down from last year and blamed on declines in featurephone sales and slow sales of IT products. The mobile division also struggled after a strong Q1 and took an operating loss, however the positive takeaways are a rising percentage of smartphone shipments and plans to launch new LTE-connected models in North America (we've spotted the likely Spectrum 2 for Verizon already), Europe and Asia later this year. The good news for the home theater segment continued however, with an operating profit of more than double last year at $187.5 million despite slightly lower sales due to an increase in sales of premium products like its Cinema 3D HDTVs, which it expects to become the "top global seller" in the 3D segment. There's more details in the press release after the break or PDF linked below if you need more numbers.
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.
Netflix Q2 2012 earnings: 530,000 more US subscribers and a return to profitability
Netflix recently let it drop that its users clocked in more than one billion hours of content-viewing in the month of June alone, although the big question for CEO Reed Hastings is how that relates to the company's subscriber base. The results are in from its Q2 2012 earnings report, and it's claiming 27.56 million streaming subscribers worldwide, up from 26 million last quarter. In the US alone that includes 23.94 million customers, after it reported 23.4 million in Q1, while DVD customers dropped by 850k to 9.24 million. While the number of new subscribers wasn't as high as some had hoped, the good news is the company is finally back in the black, with $889 million in revenue providing $6 million in net income. On the flip side, a plan to launch service in an "additional attractive European market" in Q4 is expected to result in temporary losses, but we'll find out more about those plans later in Q3. One other issue that has been resolved is the search for a new Chief Marketing Officer resulting in the hiring of Kelly Bennett, formerly a marketing executive with Warner Bros. This morning Verizon and Redbox began to carefully pull back the cover on their competing offering, and Amazon has also been making significant waves in the space. However in response, Netflix says Amazon and Hulu Plus have yet to gain meaningful traction in relation to its viewing hours, and it expects Redbox Instant to face a "big challenge" to break into the existing top 3. Its current content deal with Epix will lose online exclusivity "shortly" although it will still offer those titles, we'll see if any of the competition joins in. Their biggest competition however, is expected to come from efforts like Comcast's new X1 and Sky's Now TV, while for HBO, the possibility of cooperation is actually raised (again). We'll see if that happens or if there are any more juicy details revealed on the investor call in a few minutes.
AMD reports Q2 earnings: continues to see revenues drop, $37 million net income
Well, things are looking slightly better for AMD this quarter. While revenues continued to decline the company actually posted a profit of $37 million, a stark contrast to $590 million net loss from last quarter. Still, with revenues down 11 percent sequentially and 10 percent year-over-year to just $1.41 billion the company isn't meeting expectations. Earnings per share were aticipated to hit $0.07, but the Sunnyvale crew only managed an EPS of $0.05. The company blames the softening PC market for its continued struggles, especially in the desktop space where it has traditionally enjoyed more success. It continues to plug away with its A and E series APUs, but it's still struggling to make much of a dent in a world increasingly dominated by Intel. The Computing Solutions division saw its revenues decrease 13 percent both sequentially and year-over-year, while the GPU department was down five percent for the quarter, but steady compared to the same time last year. For more detail hit up the source link.
Intel reports Q2 earnings: rakes in $13.5 billion, pockets $2.8 billion
Intel is back to its old games in Q2 of 2012, raking in $13.5 billion during the second three month financial period of the year, up from $12.9 billion in the first quarter and a solid five percent year over year. Of that impressive pile of cash, Chipzilla was able to pocket $2.8 billion in net income, up $100,000 from Q1 and three percent from the same time period last year. That equates to a healthy $0.57 per share in earnings, which should make investors happy. PC Client Group enjoyed slow but steady growth, seeing its revenues grow by three percent, but the big story is the Data Center division which saw revenues climb 14 percent to $2.8 billion, sequentially. It's not all wine and roses however, the processor giant also lowered its expectations for Q3 after falling slightly short of its goal this quarter. Growth is expected to continue, but at a much slower rate thanks to the "challenging macroeconomic environment." Of course, an estimated $14.3 billion in Q3 would match its previous earnings record and is hardly anything to sniff at. During today's earnings call Paul Otellini took time to brag about how well the current generation of products was performing. Production had ramped up quicker than previous gen hardware, and was selling better than earlier lines of CPUs. And, though he gave no specifics, he said the company's tracking at least 20 Windows 8 tablets powered by Intel's hardware. The company also said that it credited most of its (admittedly limited) growth in the PC market to reclaiming a tiny sliver of the bottom end from AMD. Otellini also reaffirmed that Clovertrail devices will be on the market just in time to be shoehorned inside Windows 8 tablets at the launch of the new OS.
Zoom Q2HD Handy Video Recorder lets you stream and record on the move, we go hands-on
Zoom is known for making audio recorders, but its latest product, the Q2HD, brings video to the recording party -- HD video, no less. Sure, there are many ways to shoot and share our lives these days, and it's a wonder that services like Ustream aren't just full of videos of people unboxing cameras, checking in and uploading pictures to Pinterest (while also watching Ustream). Zoom, however, evidently believes that though the method might evolve, the medium largely remains the same -- voice and video. As such, the Q2HD Handy Video Recorder (to give it its full name) promises to play, capture and stream, all in "HD audio and video." Paraphrasing of the box aside, we got our hands on one and took it for a spin. Want to know how it fared? Let's reset the levels, then head past the break for the mixdown.%Gallery-160201%
