The war for the low end of the GPS market promises to be a bloody one, and it looks like TomTom's suffered the first major injury: quarterly profits at the device maker dropped 83 percent from last year, and the company says it's due to competitive price cuts. TomTom made a net profit of just €7.3M ($11.4M) this quarter compared to €44M ($66.2M) in the year-ago quarter, results which led the company to lower its outlook for the entire year. The company actually sold 50 percent more devices than it did a year ago, but as PND prices steadily fall, it looks like TomTom will have to figure out a new way to pad those margins and refill its piggy bank if that $4.2B all-cash Tele Atlas deal goes through.

[Via TrustedReviews]

It's quarterly report time, and we doubt the boys in Redmond mind taking a little shine off Apple's big day with their first quarter results -- especially since Microsoft posted profits of $4.3B on revenues of $13.7B, an increase of 23 percent over last year. The company attributed the great quarter not only to a 90-percent spike in Xbox 360 demand due to what the what analysts are amusingly calling the "Halo effect," but also to strong performance by both Vista and Office -- Microsoft says demand for Vista is "encouraging," especially in markets like Brazil, India, and China. There wasn't much mention of the company's recent investment in Facebook or how Bill and the boys plan on reversing the online division's loss of $264M, but when you're playing around with four billion in profits, we suppose you can ignore pocket change like that.

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While everyone else was distracted by some touchscreen thing, Nokia spent the past quarter absolutely dominating the worldwide market for low-end phones, and the results, announced today, seem like the company might have the right idea: Nokia's profits rose 85 percent to 1.56B euros ($2.2B) on a sales increase of 28 percent to 12.9B euros ($18.2B). Although the increase this quarter was chalked up to increased sales of phones that cost less that $40 in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, sales did fall in North America -- something Nokia will have to turn around if the company is to achieve its goal of a worldwide 40 percent market share. That's for another day, though -- for now, onnentoivotus!