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Facebook averaged over 1 billion daily users in September
Facebook's growth shows no sign of stopping. Today is announced that it has over one billion users on average using it everyday. In August it announced it had passed a milestone of having one billion users on the site in a single day. By the next month that was the average. That's a year-over-year increase of 17 percent. Monthly active users increased by 14 percent to 1.55 billion as of the end of September, an increase of 14-percent from the year before. Meanwhile the company continues to see a majority (78-percent) of its ad revenue come from mobile. In the earnings statement CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated, "we're focused on innovating and investing for the long term to serve our community and connect the entire world."
Sprint faces 'thousands' of job cuts and price hikes
SoftBank, Sprint's Japanese parent company, made a ton of profit over the last three months, but not as much profit as people were expecting. That's largely due to it having to carry Sprint on its back, since the network has gone from plucky bronze medalist to sitting in the doldrums of fourth place in America's hotly-contested carrier wars. In order to try and reduce the amount of red printer ink that Marcelo Claure (pictured, right) has to buy, SoftBank has ordered a "sustainable run rate reduction" of more than $2 billion. In other words, the company is about to have to learn how to do a lot more with a heck of a lot less cash.
HTC won't talk about its own future any more
A few months ago, we suggested that HTC could be the first really big Android manufacturer to go to the wall. In the wake of the firm's most recent update on its financial health, we're not really able to say anything different. The firm has posted a $138.6 million loss for the last three months, which is better than the $265 million it ate in the previous quarter, but still a loss. That may not, however, be the most troubling issue for the firm since, during its investors call, it announced that it would no longer publish guidance on its future performance.
LG's mobile business just lost $67.8 million
If you were under any doubt that companies will struggle to make a profit from the smartphone business, you won't after today. LG has updated its financial results to reveal that the firm's mobile division lost $67.8 million in the last three months. That's in sharp contrast to the previous quarter, where the company could boast of squeaking a 1.2 cent profit from every handset that it sold. LG believes that the recent launches of both the Nexus 5X and V10 smartphones will help to wash away some of that pain. If executives were looking for reassurance, they'll get it from Sony which also posted its updated financial results today. The rival mega-conglomerate conceded that its own mobile division is losing $1.9 million every single day -- ouch.
PlayStation and image sensors help Sony turn a profit
Twelve months ago, Sony was busy recalculating the losses it was expecting to report, due to its beleaguered mobile division. Today, the firm's announcing a 33.6-billion yen ($278-million) profit thanks (once more) to PlayStation and its image sensor division. Overall revenues came in slightly lower than a year ago (down by 0.5%), but a general uptick across the company's many divisions has helped push it into profitability. Despite this, mobile sales continue to slide (down 15-percent this quarter). Sony's Xperia brand is an expensive pastime, costing the company approximately $1.9 million per day in losses.
Samsung's price cuts for high-end phones worked, but hurt profits
First, the good news for Samsung: it made more money in the third quarter (as it predicted) than it did in the same period last year. In 2015 it racked up $6.46 billion in operating profit for Q3, which is far better than 2014's $3.8 billion haul, but still not back to 2013's peak of $9.6 billion. In its detailed release today (PDF), Samsung confirmed brisk sales of new flagships like the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy 6 Edge+ but price reductions on the new S6 models and more sales of midrange phones.
Twitter continues to struggle with attracting more users
A lot has happened in the land of Twitter in the last few months. It has a new CEO (who really isn't so new) in Jack Dorsey, who wasted no time in shaking things up in a quest for more users and, of course, more money. Since the last earnings report, Twitter has made a number of announcements towards that end: a curated Moments feed, tweet collections, polls, an updated OS X app and, well, more ads. There's also talk that Twitter will try to be much more user-friendly going forward and might even perhaps do away with its 140-character limit. Which all sounds rather encouraging, but as the latest Q3 financials show, things aren't quite so rosy just yet: It registered just 320 million monthly active users in the last quarter, which is 11 percent growth over this time last year and only a marginal increase over the 316 million in the previous quarter.
Netflix says its price hike is all about acquiring more content
Netflix has released its quarterly earnings today (PDF), and so far, the folks on Wall Street aren't responding positively. Of course, customers have already heard the big news -- Epix movies and Sesame Street are gone, its first movie Beasts of No Nation premieres tomorrow night and the price for most of us will go up $1 next year. So what's driving a stock drop (down about eight percent after the results came out)? It didn't add as many new subscribers in the US as it had predicted (1.15 million predicted vs. 880,000 actual), and with plans to spend some $5 or $6 billion on content in 2016, it will need to grow to pay for all of that. According to CEO Reed Hastings the recent price hike is meant to "improve its ability to acquire and offer high quality content," but Disney doesn't come cheap. Update: Reed Hastings asked his own question of content boss Ted Sarandos (at about 22 minutes into the video stream, embedded after the break), about the likelihood of Netflix competing directly with Vice in the next two years. Sarandos' response, was that it is " probably high." So while it's not looking at sports, news is probably next up. They also confirmed Star Wars Episode VII will not be a part of its agreement with Disney, which kicks in during Q4 next year.
BlackBerry confirms 'Priv' Android phone will launch this year
BlackBerry confirmed that rumors of its first Android device, called Priv, are accurate. In the company's latest earnings report, CEO John Chen said that the smartphone "combines the best of BlackBerry security and productivity with the expansive mobile application ecosystem available on the Android platform." It'll arrive by the end of 2015 "in major markets in-store and online," and Blackberry will reveal other details like specs and price within the next few weeks. So far, rumors indicate that it'll have a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge-like curved screen, QWERTY keyboard slider and 18-megapixel camera. Despite the company's turn toward Android, Chen said it "remains committed to the BlackBerry 10 OS," and will release version 10.3.3 in March, 2016.
Is HTC Android's first falling giant?
HTC has announced "significant cuts" and slashed jobs after posting a $265 million net loss, with more losses promised for the future. Reuters is reporting that the poor performance has been blamed on the company's One series of flagships that, while accomplished, are losing out to "more fashionable phones" in the market. TechCrunch is saying that HTC is hoping to reverse this trend by turning its attentions to the middle-tier of the market, devices that cost between $300 and $500, parking its tanks squarely on the lawns of Chinese rivals Huawei and Xiaomi.
PlayStation helps Sony to big profits, but mobile's struggling
Sony is actually doing all right despite a lot of turmoil, and it's got the PlayStation 4 to thank. This quarter, the company moved 3 million PS4s, bringing total sales of the console to 25.3 million units. Peripheral and software shipments also went up, boosting gaming revenue by 12.1 percent over last year. Despite lower PS3 sales, the division still hit 288.6 billion yen ($2.3 billion) and made around $160 million. Sony recently said that the PS4 is outselling the Xbox One in most of Europe by nearly double, and has outsold its rival considerably overall. It originally expected to sell 16 million PS4s in 2015, but has now bumped that forecast to 16.5 million.
LG made 1.2 cents in profit for every phone it sold last quarter
LG's latest earnings report shows just how tough the smartphone market is getting. On the one hand, LG Mobile shipped 8.1 million LTE smartphones, its best result ever. On the other hand, it sold fewer premium models in Korea and spent a lot of money marketing its flagship G4 in the US against models by Apple, Samsung, et al. (The company singled out Apple, saying that iPhone sales hurt its earnings this quarter.) The net result was a mobile operating profit of just 200 million won ($172,000) or 1.2 cents per phone. The good news is that the LG G4 has only been on sale in the US for two months, so it may have a stronger impact on LG's bottom line next quarter.
TV giant Comcast actually has more internet customers now
Just in case you were wondering why Comcast is suddenly ready with TV service for people who prefer to watch over the internet, the earnings report it released today can show you why. For the first time (albeit by a narrow margin of 22.55 million to 22.3 million), the cable giant has more high speed internet customers than cable TV subscribers. As it usually does in its financial Q2, Comcast lost TV subscribers, but fewer this year (69,000) than last year (144,000), a number it credits to ongoing improvements in customer service. While the shift away from TV is a small one right now, it reminds us of a similar tipping point: when Netflix streaming overtook discs, and never looked back.
Microsoft reports a $2.1 billion loss in Q4
Microsoft's earnings for the fourth quarter are in, and they show an operating loss of $2.1 billion, despite $22.2 billion in revenue (compared to $23.3 billion last year). A lot of that is due to the previously announced write-down for Nokia (and 7,800 job cuts) that caused an $7.5 billion hit. Of course, we knew that was coming, but the other news is that revenue and operating income were slightly down from last year too. Microsoft sold 8.4 million Lumia phones in Q4 (compared to 5.8 million last year), but revenue dropped 38 percent to $748 million. As the company looks forward to Windows 10, revenue for that division dropped 22 percent, a figure that it attributed to XP's end-of-support cycle.
Google continues to make money thanks to mobile and YouTube
While Google has been enjoying consistent financial growth for quite some time, it was dinged the last two quarters for not living up to Wall Street expectations. But in today's Q2 earnings announcement, the Mountain View firm has made significant strides in rectifying that reputation. It reported a revenue of $17.7 billion this past quarter, which is an 11 percent growth year over year and a 3 percent growth since Q1. This has beat Wall Street estimates handily, causing its stock to climb by 11 percent at closing. What's contributing to this success? As CFO Ruth Porat puts it, it's all thanks to mobile, with YouTube playing a star role.
Netflix: New season of 'OITNB' spurred a record amount of streaming
Netflix is flying high enough to need a 7-for-1 stock split, but now it's competing in a world where Showtime and HBO offer streaming video over the internet too. That makes today's earnings results (PDF) ever more important, and not surprisingly, the company focused on its push for original, exclusive content. Now up to 65 million members worldwide (42 million in the US), Netflix mentioned that the debut of Orange is the New Black S3 resulted in viewers watching a record number of hours for one day the following Sunday, the same day as HBO's Game of Thrones finale and an NBA Finals game.
Acer feels the pain of the PC's decline
Analysts believe that the PC has had its day in the sun, and now, we've got another shred of proof to toss into the dossier. Acer, the world's fifth-largest PC maker, has revealed that its revenues fell by the better part of 30 percent in the second quarter of the year. The terse announcement wasn't supported by a full earnings release, but the figures mean that this period has been the company's smallest quarter since 2006. The spreadsheet may be missing, but Digitimes is reporting that Acer is betting on Chromebooks, 2-in-1 and gaming laptops will restore the firm to profitability.
T-Mobile widens roaming as it becomes the third biggest carrier
Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure recently said he was tired of T-Mobile's "Uncarrier bullshit," but that BS has almost certainly helped it displace Sprint as the nation's third-largest carrier. T-Mobile's preliminary earnings report shows that it added 2.1 million new customers this quarter, giving it 58.9 million in total. As of May, Sprint had 57.1 million customers after adding 1.2 million in the previous quarter. Depending on Sprint's performance over the past few months, T-Mobile might sprint ahead of it by next quarter. As if that isn't enough, Legere also announced the company's latest Uncarrier move, and it's sure to make Claure "mad, bro."
Samsung's profits down again as it misreads demand for newest phones
Samsung predicts that its earnings from April-June of this year will likely be down four percent from last year, suggesting that sales of its newest flagship smartphones have failed to hit the mark. However, it will still be the company's highest quarterly profit since Q2 2015. The company's forecast is thin on details -- revenue is also down 8.4 percent from the same period last year-- but many analysts think supply shortages have stymied sales of Samsung's S6 Edge. The WSJ's sources say that the company struggled to match production to the demand of customers, who wanted the curved Galaxy S6 Edge over the original S6, initially predicting to sell four Galaxy S6 smartphones for each S6 Edge. At the same time, the company's lucrative component business, which puts parts in rival phones as well as PCs, will likely have another strong quarter, putting an equally strong spotlight on the mobile arm's struggles.
Netflix announces a 7-for-1 stock split
We've come a long way from Qwikster. Netflix's stock price has more than doubled since last December, and with prices of shares nearing $700 today it announced plans (PDF) for a 7-for-1 stock split. The price closed today at $681, and the Board of Directors approved a plan to distribute six additional shares for each one held as of the close of business on July 2nd. In terms of how often we see something like that, this comes about a year after Apple announced its own 7-for-1 split. On a melancholy note, the split will come almost five years to the day after Blockbuster's attempt at a reverse stock split to avoid delisting fell through. Ouch.
