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Qualcomm reports record quarterly revenues, boasts 100th Snapdragon device
Qualcomm's back again with yet another set of impressive numbers. For the second quarter of this fiscal year, the chip giant saw record earnings of $3.88 billion, up 46 percent from the same quarter in the previous year, and collected $999 million of sweet profit which is a 29 percent jump from last year. This is no doubt to do with the 70 percent increase in the MSM7000- and MSM8000-series Snapdragon shipments in this half of the fiscal year (compared to 2H 2010), and it should be noted that this quarter also saw the 100th Snapdragon-powered device announced by a Qualcomm client. Additionally, EVP Steve Mollenkopf reassured us that the recent events in Japan won't have any significant impact on upcoming shipments, so the 30 Snapdragon tablets in the pipeline should arrive as scheduled. Excerpts from the financial report can be found after the break.
Apple Q2 2011 Results Call Liveblog
Welcome to TUAW's liveblog of Apple's 2nd Fiscal Quarter Results call. During the call, we'll deliver a play-by-play of the details of the financial report for the quarter ending March 31, 2011. We will also be taking your questions and comments during the call. If you'd like to listen in on this very important financial call, Apple is making it available via QuickTime streaming audio at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq211/ beginning at 5 PM ET sharp. The call will be available for your listening pleasure for two weeks after today's event; the liveblog transcript is available on TUAW forever. iPhone and iPod touch users can join in on the fun using the free CoveritLive iPhone app. TUAW staffers will be manning the liveblog starting at 4:50 PM EDT; the call will begin about 10 minutes later. <a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=9570191c8c" href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=9570191c8c" >Apple Q2 FY11 Earnings Call Liveblog</a>
Apple Q2 2011 earnings call scheduled for April 20
Apple's second fiscal quarter ends this week on Thursday, March 31, and the company has already scheduled the earnings call with financial analysts to discuss just how good (or bad) things were during the quarter. As you can see, the call is scheduled for 5 PM ET (2 PM PT) on Wednesday, April 20. That's at the time we normally host TUAW TV Live, so we may look into combining the call with a livestreaming video event for readers to join in on rather than our usual liveblog. You'll be able to listen in on the call here, and we'll be sure to remind you of the event in the days leading up to the call. [via MacStories]
Qualcomm has best quarter ever, teases a host of Snapdragon tablets
If you've got a speedy Snapdragon in your smartphone, Qualcomm's the one to thank -- but considering the raw earnings figures shared yesterday, your dollars have applauded the firm enough already. Qualcomm reported record earnings of $3.35 billion for its first fiscal quarter of the year, up 25 percent since Q1 2010, and it raked in a nice fat $1.17 billion of that in profit, 39 percent more than last year. That's thanks to shipping 118 million of those Mobile Station Modem (MSM) chips that power mobile devices, as well as other ventures, and the company expects revenues to continue their upward bent as 2011 progresses -- thanks to new devices on the way. Qualcomm EVP Steve Mollenkopf told investors that "we currently have more than 150 Snapdragon devices in development, including more than 20 tablets," and that the dual-core 1.2GHz MSM8660 in particular was picking up steam, with over 60 devices slated to use the dual-mode chipset with HSPA+ and EV-DO Rev. B. What of a groundbreaking deal with Apple to power new iPhones and iPads? CEO Paul Jacobs wouldn't say: "We're happy to see the Verizon iPhone announcement since it's been the subject of intense speculation, but we have no other comments on that topic." Guess we'll have to wait and see.
In advance of Q4 earnings call: AAPL hits $310, 45m iPads expected to sell in 2011
All of us at TUAW are looking forward to the Apple 4th Quarter earnings call on Monday afternoon, which we will be liveblogging right here on the site. With some of the wonderful news coming out from Wall Street and financial analysts today, our very own Mike Rose says that the earnings call should "have a mariachi band and a fire-eater." We're expecting it will be quite entertaining. First, we've been watching the share price of AAPL, which is flirting with $310 today. But there's even better news from analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities: Apple could sell as many as 45 million iPads in 2011. White's research note to clients was covered by eWeek, and he talked to suppliers this week in Taiwan and China who support unit sales of 45 million of Apple's tablets. Coupled with Apple's announcements of aggressive retail expansion of sales of the device at Target, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Verizon, and AT&T, he expects the iPad to be one of the most coveted gifts for the 2010 holiday season, which should make the Apple execs on Monday happy enough to dance around a sombrero. Be sure to join us on Monday, October 18th at 5 PM EDT for our liveblog of the earnings call. [via MacObserver]
AMD launching next generation of Radeon graphics cards next week, shipping by end of the year
The attentive newshounds over at AnandTech have picked out a golden nugget of disclosure from AMD's earnings call last night, citing CEO Dirk Meyer as saying "we will be launching our second-generation DX11 graphics offerings next week." What he's talking about, of course, is the highly anticipated refresh of the Radeon HD 5000 series, which some recent spec leaks suggested would bring a healthy bump in performance. After announcing the new product line next week, AMD promises to flood the market with "hundreds of thousands of units," which will be shipping before the end of this quarter -- meaning you'll have a Radeon HD 6xxx in time for the holiday gaming craze if you really want it. Can't ask anymore than that, now can we?
AMD sees a tablet chip in its future, and an end to the core-count wars
AMD told us that it wasn't terribly interested in the iPad market, and would wait and see if touchscreen slates took off, but CEO Dirk Meyer changed the company's tone on tablets slightly after reporting a $118 million net loss (on $1.62 billion in revenue) in a Q3 2010 earnings call this afternoon. First revealing his belief that tablets will indeed cannibalize the notebook and netbook markets, he later told investors that he actually expects AMD's netbook parts to start appearing in OEM slates in the next couple of years, and that AMD itself would "show up with a differentiated offering with great graphics and video technology" when the market becomes large enough to justify an R&D investment. Elsewhere, AMD CTO of servers Donald Newell prognosticated that the number of individual CPUs on a chip won't go up forever: "There will come an end to the core-count wars," he told IDG News. Just as the megahertz race was eventually defeated by thermal restrictions, so too will the number of cores on a chip cease to increase. " I won't put an exact date on it, but I don't myself expect to see 128 cores on a full-sized server die by the end of this decade," he said. So much for our Crysis-squashing terascale superchip dreams, we suppose.
Apple's Q4 earnings call will take place Oct. 18
Can Apple continue the string of unprecedented financial success? Will the 4th quarter of 2010 (ending tomorrow, September 30th) be even more successful than the 3rd quarter, now that the iPad has had time to dominate the market for three more months, and the iPhone 4 has overcome the negative "grip of death" publicity? We'll all find out on October 18th, when Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, and a rogue's gallery of tech analysts bring us the 4th quarter earnings call for Apple Inc. As usual, TUAW will be providing a liveblog of the event, complete with commentary by our staff of bloggers. The event usually starts about 5 PM ET, and we'll be sure to give you a heads-up as the day approaches. [via The Mac Observer]
NVIDIA puts its Tegra 2 eggs in Android's basket, aims to topple Apple's A4
Microsoft's Kin One and Kin Two might not turn out to be the most auspicious devices for Tegra's debut in the smartphone arena, but NVIDIA seems to be learning from its mistakes. Admitting that the company committed too strongly to Microsoft with the first-gen iteration, Jen-Hsun Huang has now said that the second generation of Tegra will look to Android devices first and foremost. This newfound focus will materialize with both smartphones and tablets in the third and fourth quarter of this year, and will, according to Jen-Hsun, offer device makers a viable competitor to Apple's A4 SOC. In other news, NVIDIA has now shipped "a few hundred thousand" Fermi cards, and has also achieved 70 design wins with its Optimus graphics switching technology. Eleven of those are now out in the wild, but the vast majority are still to come, mostly as part of the seasonal "back to school" refresh at the end of the summer. These revelations came during the company's earnings call for the first quarter of its 2011 fiscal year, and you can find the full transcript at the source below. [Thanks, TareG]
Clearwire promises Clear-branded HTC and Samsung WiMAX phones this year
Without going into much detail, Clearwire mentioned on its first quarter earnings call today that WiMAX-capable phones bearing the Clear name from both Samsung and HTC are "expected" to be available before 2010's out, which is a pretty optimistic affirmation of comments the company made earlier this year. It describes the Sammy as "an Android-based 3G/4G/WiFi device optimized for heavy video and video communications use," while the HTC's language leaves out the platform -- it's just called "a 3G/4G/WiFi enabled phone," leading us to believe that this puppy could very well be running Windows Phone 7. If that's the case, we can understand why HTC wouldn't want Clearwire spilling the beans since they've yet to officially announce any plans for jumping into the WinPho 7 game. In fact, Clearwire went so far as to say on the call that the HTC device would not be the EVO 4G, so yeah, we can totally buy that there's some Microsoft action going on behind the scenes here. As for Clearwire's health, it has seen a 94 percent year-over-year boost in total WiMAX subscribers for a total just shy of a million -- and interestingly, the overwhelming majority of those are retail, not wholesale, meaning that folks are running Clear-branded equipment. We expect that to change dramatically once Sprint's Overdrive gets a little more penetration and the EVO comes into play, but for now, some 814,000 customers are familiar with the Clear logo. They lost a hair over $94 million in the quarter, but hey, in the scheme of things, that's peanuts -- building out networks isn't a cheap endeavor, after all.
Sprint halves its quarterly customer loss, increases revenue for the first time in ages
If you can find the silver linings, the news is finally getting a little better over at the number three largest carrier in the States after countless quarters of brutal numbers. Sprint still isn't turning a profit or earning net customer adds, but it's continuing to stem losses by posting its first sequential rise in revenue in almost three years, clocking just under $8.1 billion for the quarter; that's still less than the revenue it posted a year ago, but hey, at least it's an improvement over Q4 2009's roughly $7.8 billion. All told, that works out to a net loss of $865 million, which is also better than Q4's $980 million. Net wireless customers fell by 75,000 -- considerably better than Q4's 148,000 -- but net postpaid customers fell by a much larger 578,000, suggesting that Boost Mobile's aggressive marketing is probably working. That's all well and good, but it also likely means that ARPU is on a downward trend; Sprint claims it was flat sequentially and down a dollar from $56 to $55 year-over-year. All told, it seems the company's fortunes are improving by baby steps -- but is it fast enough? And how much is the EVO 4G going to mix things up?
Apple has another record quarter, posts $3.07b profit
Apple might not be too happy about having a fourth-gen iPhone prototype get stolen, but there's nothing like cold, hard cash to turn a frown upside-down -- and the company certainly made plenty of it in the second quarter of 2010, posting a $3.07b profit on $13.5b in revenue. That's the Apple's best non-holiday quarter ever -- profits were up 90 percent while revenue was up 49 percent -- and yet another record quarter for Steve and the gang. Mac sales were up 33 percent from a year ago with 2.94m units sold, iPhone sales were up 131 percent with 8.75m units sold, and iPod sales were down one point with 10.89m units sold. We're just about to jump on the analyst conference call, we'll let you know if we hear anything good -- we wonder what people might be asking about? Update: Oh, why not -- let's liveblog this thing. Follow along after the break at 5PM ET.
Reminder: Apple 2nd quarter results due next week
Apple has released a media alert announcing its FY10 second quarter results conference call -- which we already knew was on 4/20, but it's nice that they've made it official, again. The conference call will take place on Tuesday at 2 pm PDT/5 pm EDT. Those interested can listen to the call starting at 2 pm by tuning into the webcast of the event. The quarterly results themselves will be announced shortly after the markets close in the US at 4 pm EDT. Apple had issued guidance of $2.06-$2.18 profit per share on $11-$11.4 billion of revenue. As usual, this is well below the $2.43 per share most analysts expect Apple to report. For those hoping to hear iPad numbers, don't hold your breath. Though the iPad was announced in January, it did not ship until April 3rd, which means its sales numbers will not factor into Apple's Q2 earnings. TUAW will have analysis of the earnings during the call in our regular quarterly earnings liveblog.
Feel-goodroid: Nexus One is in the black, 60K Android devices activated per day
We'd heard a couple times that the Nexus One was selling at a mere trickle, but what we haven't heard is whether the phones that have sold are enough to generate a profit for Google -- and on its earnings call today, the company claimed for the first time that its superphone is indeed in the black. Speaking both of the Nexus One specifically and of the platform as a whole, the company said that "it is a profitable business for us... we are driving the business to be a profitable business," some of the strongest language we've heard that Google intends to fully convert Android from a hobby into an integral part of its financials going forward. On a related note, the company also boasted on the call that it's "seeing more than 60 thousand devices sold and activations daily," which -- by our rough math, anyhow -- would work out to close to 22 million Android activations annually, and they're now up to some 38,000 apps in the Market. Certainly seem like these guys have cemented their position as a mobile powerhouse, doesn't it?
HTC beats earnings estimates in the first quarter, cites awesome marketing
There's no doubt the impending legal antics are weighing on hearts and minds inside HTC, but for now, the company's got other fish to fry -- like the first quarter's financial results, for example. Fortunately, pretty much everything came up roses here with $1.2 billion in revenue, up some 19.3 percent year-over-year and nearly 11 percent higher than the high end of its estimate going into the call, though that still represents an 8 percent drop against the last quarter -- holiday quarters are typically blockbusters, so no huge surprise there. HTC credits a "successful" marketing campaign for its success; we credit awesome hardware, but we'd guess the real answer lies somewhere in between. Quietly brilliant, indeed.
RIM's earnings just shy of expectations, expects boost next quarter
The latest quarter of earnings reported by RIM today was a bevy of pretty good news sprinkled in around one moderately negative piece -- quarterly revenue -- which missed the consensus estimate of $4.31 billion by about $230 million. Otherwise, though, the company set a new record for quarterly BlackBerry activations, raking in 4.9 million new accounts to bring the total to 41 million, and annual revenue grew 35 percent to $15 billion versus the year prior. Notably, co-CEO Jim Balsillie chimed in to say that the company is "off to a great start in fiscal 2011 and expect strong shipments, revenue, subscriber and earnings growth in Q1" to the tune of somewhere between $1.31 and $1.38 a share, which beats analyst estimates, so these guys must really like what they've got in store for the all-BlackBerry, all-the-time WES show in Orlando next month. That said, the company still closed down a little over a percent in trading today, so the bottom line -- missing your numbers for the quarter -- clearly counts for something.
Motorola will 'broaden the scope' of Blur, sell a phone through Google this year
Earnings calls tend to be about as exciting as a stale piece of white bread, but every once in a while something juicy falls through -- and morsels are filtering out of the earnings call that Motorola held this morning. Here are the biggies: We hope you like Blur, because it's not going anywhere. CEO Sanjay Jha says that "the majority of our new smartphone [sic] this year will feature" the platform, and that it'll "include enhancements to address the prosumer segment of the market." They're looking to rope in media (music, photos, and so on) the same way they did social networking, boost enterprise compatibility for white collar types that only have one phone, and improve network efficiency to ease up on battery drain. All good things, we reckon. Feature phones in Moto's range will "meaningfully decline" as it heads toward planned profitability in the fourth quarter through higher-margin smartphones. Android isn't the only game plan, though -- it'll continue to develop its ultra low-end handsets for emerging markets. Following the Nexus One's lead, Jha said that it'll launch "at least one direct-to-consumer device with Google." That matches up nicely with a statement he made during our CES interview that "there will be multiple devices [launched through Google] and I think that we said 'yes' today that probably this next device is our device." All told, we have every reason to believe that this'll be an exciting year for Moto fans -- and that HTC needs to keep a close eye on these guys.
Motorola files another small profit in fourth quarter
Moto appears to be continuing its long, arduous road toward recovery on news of its financial results for the fourth quarter of '09 -- or, at the very least, it's not losing any ground. Overall, the company posted a meager profit of $142 million for the quarter on revenue of $5.723 billion, $14 million better than a quarter prior and a staggering $3.799 billion better than the same quarter a year ago. Breaking it down by division, Mobile Devices is still in the red, but not by terribly much -- it did $1.8 billion in sales with an operating loss of $132 million, while Home and Networks Mobility (the guys responsible for wireless infrastructure and set-top boxes) made $91 million on sales of $2 billion. Some 12 million handsets were shipped in the quarter alongside 3.4 million set-tops; that marks a downtick of 1.4 million phones from the third quarter, but as the company shifts focus to smartphones, it makes sense that would happen to a certain extent -- provided the company can keep margins high. The company expects to lose somewhere between 1 and 3 cents per share in the first quarter of 2010, so the recovery isn't complete yet -- but stemming the bleeding was an important first step.
Ericsson to cut 1,500 more jobs than expected in wake of nightmarish Q4 '09 earnings call
Just when you thought that infrastructure firms would be banking ridiculous quantities as carriers around the world kick off LTE trials and full-scale network upgrades, it looks like we're actually still stuck in a bearish period on Ericsson's news that its profit fell a whopping 92 percent to $43.4 million from the same period a year prior. Analysts probably thought the same, too, seeing how they'd reached a consensus estimate of 2.5 billion kronor (about $346 million) in profit, generally making this a quarter Ericsson would like to forget as quickly as possible. That'll be difficult, though, because it's currently on the path to cut several thousand jobs, which is where the other shocking half of this news comes into play: they've now bumped the total cuts from 5,000 to about 6,500, perhaps a side effect of the fact that new CEO Hans Vestberg sees the dead-in-the-water market "staying the same" so far against the fourth quarter. So c'mon, carriers of the world -- let's drop a few hundred billion into 4G upgrades right this second, shall we?
Liveblog: Apple's Q1 2010 results conference call
Thanks for joining TUAW for our liveblog of Apple's first quarter 2010 earnings conference call. If you've never joined us for a liveblog before, it's a blast. You can send us your questions or comments as the phone call is progressing. We'll be supplying our "expert commentary," but we invite your inquiries and opinions as well. Just use the CoverItLive tool below to join in. To listen to the phone call, you can tune in at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/21alert_results.html. After the phone call has been completed, you can revisit our liveblog at this page and listen to the phone call at the same URL. Apple FY10 Q1 Results Conference Call
