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Lenovo is being dragged down by its mobile business
Lenovo is accustomed to good financial news, but even it's not immune to the tepid smartphone market. The company's mobile division lost $112 million as sales took a 23 percent nosedive, including both Moto and Lenovo handsets. Not long ago, Lenovo was the number one smartphone maker in China, with mobile sales (including tablets) actually besting PCs. Now, however, it's well behind arch-foes Oppo, Huawei and Vivo.
Nikon cancels DL compacts amid 'extraordinary' losses
Nikon has cancelled the DL series premium compact cameras it was hoping to pit against Sony and Panasonic. The lineup was supposed to launch in June of 2016, but was delayed due to problems with the electronics. Since then, its rivals have released new models (the RX100 Mark V and Panasonic DMC-LX10) putting the company significantly behind. Because of all that (and a soft market) Nikon thought the DL compacts weren't likely to be profitable.
GoPro is planning to release a Hero6 camera in 2017
If you've been following GoPro for the last few months through its Hero5 production issues and Karma drone recall (now back on shelves), you're probably not surprised by a disappointing earnings report showing a net loss of $116 million. Now, the company has closed offices and shut down its entertainment division with an eye towards returning to profitability this year. Of course, for fans of its products, the question is what new devices are on the way, and while CEO Nick Woodman didn't drop any specific details, he did confirm that there will be a new Hero6 action camera this year.
Facebook shows no sign of stopping, now has 1.86 billion users
Facebook is under quite a bit of pressure of late. It's trying to fix the rise of fake news and clickbait on its News Feed and, more recently, it's had to deal with the Zenimax lawsuit against Oculus. But all of that hasn't eaten into Facebook's bottom line. As its Q4 2016 earnings report shows, the company once again raked in cash hand over fist, with $8.8 billion in revenue and $3.56 billion in profit. Its user growth also continues to climb, with 1.86 billion monthly users and 1.74 billion logging in on mobile. Mobile advertising made up 84 percent of its revenue last quarter.
Alphabet's moonshots are making more money, still aren't profitable
Alphabet, Google's parent company, continues to rake in money hand over fist. In its fourth and final quarter for 2016, the company reported $26.02 billion in revenue, which is a growth of 22 percent compared to this time last year. According to a press release, this performance was led by "mobile search and YouTube," which makes sense since advertising continues to be Google's bread and butter -- $22.4 billion of that revenue came from advertising. This time however, even Alphabet's non-Google properties improved revenue-wise -- it reported $262 million revenue from its Other Bets this quarter, which is an improvement over the $150 million from this time last year. Indeed, Other Bets made $809 million in the entirety of 2016, which is up 82 percent over 2015. CFO Ruth Porat said during the earnings call that a lot of this can be attributed to the performance of Nest, Fiber and Verily. She specifically called out Nest, saying that Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales of the connected home products nearly doubled during that time. That said, its Other Bets properties are still operating under a loss; it lost over a billion dollars this part quarter. And even though CEO Sundar Pichai wouldn't reveal just how much Google hardware was sold, he did say that the "early signs are promising." He specifically pointed out that Google Home was a "very popular present" over the holidays, though he refused to divulge actual numbers. Pichai attributes a lot of this success to the improvements in machine learning, and how that informs every product Google makes -- everything from search to maps to, yes, its hardware too. "Computing is going from mobile first to AI first," said Pichai. "Machine learning is central to who we are as a company and the products we make."
The cloud and Office keep Microsoft afloat during PC slump
It's been clear for a while that a big part of Microsoft's future is ensconced in the cloud, and its latest (Q2 2017) earnings report just drives that point home. Wall Street types have been paying close attention to the company's Azure cloud services, and with good reason — Microsoft almost doubled its Azure revenue since this time last year, making up a considerable chunk of the Intelligent Cloud unit's 8 percent revenue bump.
Netflix expects HBO to go binge-first in an 'internet TV world'
Netflix just announced its final earnings report for 2016 (PDF), revealing that it grew by seven million customers to 93.8 million. That's two million more than it had projected, up more than 25 percent for the year and puts the 100 million benchmark squarely in its sights for 2017. Beyond revealing that House of Cards will launch in Q2 instead of Q1 this year, Netflix mentioned the strong performance of original series like The OA and 3%. Regarding the latter, Netflix says it was watched by "millions" of US viewers and is the first Portuguese-language show to travel that way.
LG promotes its Home Appliance boss to Chief Executive
After a couple of rough quarters for its mobile phone division, LG announced today that it will promote Jo Seong-jin, the head of its profitable Home Appliance business, to the role of Vice Chairman and CEO of the company. While the company's new flagship phone, the LG V20, appears to be selling well, the mobile division as a whole has been dragging the company down since Q3 2015 despite record numbers from the the home appliances division.
GoPro's production issues cut into its sales and stock price
Despite including the release of its new Karma drone and Hero5 camera, GoPro's quarterly earnings report had some bad news today. With sales falling to $240.6 million (compared to $400 million in the same period last year), and a forecast for the year that dropped from a range of $1.35 billion to $1.5 billion, to $1.25 billion to $1.3 billion, shareholders sent its price diving to under $10 per share in after-hours trading. The company lost $104 million during the quarter, but founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman said: "Looking forward to 2017, we expect to return to profitability, driven by the strength of our new products." On a call about the earnings, Woodman said the company launched fewer cameras and drones than expected due to production issues that will also probably keep it from meeting demand during the holiday season.
Fitbit sales are slowing despite new products
A sign that the market for fitness trackers might be reaching its saturation point, or at least losing a little bit of its steam: Fitbit's stock price fell hard, dropping by 30 percent today after the company announced it was about $3 million short of its third quarter revenue goals. While Fitbit did experience some revenue growth over the quarter, its net income was around $26 million, compared to $46 million for the same period last year.
Facebook racks up more users, nearly triples profits
While Twitter is trying to rebuild itself, Facebook recorded yet another blockbuster quarter. Over the past three months, the social network had $7.01 billion in revenue and $2.38 billion in profits, which is an astounding 166 percent increase over this time last year. You read that right; Facebook's profits this quarter has nearly tripled year-over-year.
LG would make more money if it wasn't for smartphones
You know it's bad when your mobile business gets trounced by the rival that sold a smartphone that actually blew up in its customers pockets. That's the situation over at LG, whose mobile communications division contrived to lose $389.4 million across the last three months. In the company's latest financials, it's revealed that LG shipped 13.5 million devices and saw US sales increase by 14 percent quarter-on-quarter. But that's pretty much the same thing the company achieved in every quarter since the start of 2014, and that plan stopped making a profit partway through 2015.
Samsung profits dip 30 percent due to exploding Note 7s
The world's largest smartphone maker's profits plunged 30 percent due an exploding flagship model. Samsung's operating profit for the third quarter was $4.6 billion, down from $6.4 million the quarter before, making it the lowest operating profit the company has made in two years. Samsung had already revised its financial estimates following the recall of millions of Galaxy Note 7s.
Samsung's Note 7 crisis will cost at least $2.34 billion
Do you know what's really bad for your business? Selling a smartphone with a tendency to explode in your customer's pockets. That's why Samsung has revised its quarterly profit guidance, suggesting that it'll lose out on $2.34 billion in the current three-month period. That loss is all down to the Note 7 and its propensity for self-immolation that has so baffled the company's engineers.
BlackBerry is done making smartphones
In BlackBerry's latest quarterly financials released today, the company revealed it's getting out of the hardware business once and for all, choosing instead to "outsource that function to partners." It's not a huge shock given BlackBerry CEO John Chen has foreshadowed the cut and run several times. Earlier this year, he warned that if hardware wasn't making a profit by September it would be time to call it quits, and he's kept his word after the Mobility Solutions division posted an $8 million loss for this past quarter. This doesn't mean we've seen the last of BlackBerry handsets, though; they just won't be produced in-house anymore.
HTC's 10 and Vive boost sales, but the future still looks grim
HTC's Vive VR headset and HTC 10 smartphone sold briskly in Q2 2016, boosting revenue 27 percent over last quarter to 18.9 billion Taiwanese dollars ($598 million). The bad news is that compared to the same period last year, sales are down 42.7 percent -- not quite as bad as the 64 percent tumble last quarter, but still a precipitous drop. The company had an operating loss of 4.2 billion Taiwanese dollars ($133 million), making five straight quarters of futility.
Sony's mobile division (sorta) makes a profit
Sony's most recent financial report is out and, if you squint, things almost look good for its moribund mobile division. Sony Mobile posted a profit of $4 million, which the company attributed to the fact that it's fired enough people to get its costs to break even. If you want to put a positive spin on things, it looks like a greatly-slimmed down phone business might generate just enough money to keep it going. Given that Sony's had to cover Mobile's losses with PlayStation's gains for the last few years, some executives may be reaching for the champagne.
CBS and Showtime have two million internet-only subscribers
While CBS is busy licensing content to Netflix for display outside of the US and Canada, here its own streaming services are off to a good start. On today's earnings call, execs said CBS All Access and the streaming version of Showtime have combined to reach more than two million subscribers, with the number "about evenly split" between the two.
Google reports big profits as it continues to invest in mobile
It's been nearly a year since Google underwent a major organization do-over, with a renaming of the overall parent company to Alphabet, while Google itself was now just a sub-firm within. But, as its latest earnings results suggest, a majority of Alphabet's profits still come from regular ol' Google. Of the $21.5 billion it made in revenue, $21.3 billion was from Google-related ventures like search and advertising. Also, that $21.5 billion number? That's a whopping 21 percent increase from this time last year.
Facebook just can't stop growing
In stark contrast to Twitter's recent woes, Facebook is enjoying what is probably its most successful year-to-date. The social network has reported that it made $6.44 billion in revenue and $2.05 billion in profit this past quarter, which is 59 percent over this time last year. What's even more amazing is that its user numbers continue to grow: it now has 1.71 billion monthly active users overall, while 1.57 billion of its monthly users are on mobile. Indeed, it now has over 1.03 billion mobile users a day. Mobile is such an avenue of growth for the company that a whopping 84 percent of its advertising revenue came from mobile ads.
