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Square Enix braces investors for 'extraordinary losses' in last fiscal year
On the eve of its quarterly presentation to investors and analysts, Square Enix today sent out a "revised" (uh-oh) forecast for the financial results of the last fiscal year, which ended March 31, 2011. Stakeholders should bring their ponchos -- they're in for stormy weather. In February, with nine months in the books, the publisher was confident it could hold onto its threadbare profits, forecasting a meager ¥1 billion ($12 million and change) in net income at the close of the fiscal year. While the unforeseen and devastating Great East Japan Earthquake in March knocked out more than half of that forecast income -- costing Square Enix roughly ¥0.6 billion in amusement facility closures and repairs -- other factors contributed more significantly to the company's now bleak outlook. So how bad is it? Square Enix currently anticipates a ¥12 billion (nearly $150 million) net loss for the 12-month period, a negative 226 percent change from the previous fiscal year (which brought in ¥9.509 billion in income). Further, accounting for additional subtractions from the balance sheet, the company is bracing investors for "total extraordinary losses of approximately ¥16.0 billion during the fiscal year." If there's a silver lining, it's in the publisher "introducing a tightened selection standard regarding title lineup" -- which cost Square Enix about ¥4.5 billion in the short term due to project cancellations, including a Highlander game and Gun Loco. But, ideally, this quality control will "strengthen" the company's critical video game segment in the long run, and perhaps restore Square Enix to its former glory.
iPad 2 production shortfall cause: LCD and speaker issues
IHS iSuppli cut its forecast for yearly iPad sales following Apple's earnings conference call on April 20. iSuppli predicts the Cupertino company will ship 39.7 million iPads in 2010, a 9.1 percent reduction from its earlier forecast of 43.7 million. Apple confirmed during its earnings conference call that iPad 2 demand significantly outpaced supply. The iPad 2 flew off the shelves in Q2, and Apple sold every tablet it manufactured. According to iSuppli, Apple's manufacturing is constrained by a shortage of the new speaker that graces the iPad 2. Unknown quality concerns with the LCD display may have also played a role in this less than optimal rate of manufacturing. Demand for the iPad is expected to be strong for the rest of the year with a continuing production shortfall limiting the total yearly sales. During the Q&A session after the earnings call, Apple would not comment on when the supply of the iPad 2 would catch up with demand. Fingers crossed it happens soon so that prospective iPad owners no longer have to camp out early at their local Apple Store each day. [Via MacRumors]
Nokia's Q1 2011: smartphone share down to 26 percent, 'more challenging' times ahead
Nokia has just published its first quarterly results in the era of its Microsoft partnership and things aren't looking too bright. Smartphone market share, which had been at 41 percent this time last year and 31 percent in January, has now dipped to 26 percent, while operating profits have taken a 17 percent tumble relative to last year. The company managed to ship one percent more phones in Q1 2011 than in Q1 2010, but its 108.5 million units was an 18 percent drop from last quarter's totals. CEO Stephen Elop describes the first quarter as solid, but warns that the second will be "more challenging." The impact of Japan's disaster earlier in the year will be felt more strongly in Q2, we're warned, with respect to component supply and logistics, while new products won't figure too strongly as Nokia intends to "start shipping the majority of our new products in the second half of the year." Elop is, however, encouraged by the "roadmap of mobile phones and Symbian smartphones" that Nokia has in store for 2011, which sounds good on the surface, but we'd be more comforted if he'd have inserted the words "Windows Phone" or "MeeGo" in that sentence too. Hit the links below to see the full financial details.
ARM predicts dual-core Cortex-A15 devices in late 2012, quad-core variants 'later on'
Smartphones and tablets, the two hottest categories of consumer devices right now, are dominated by ARM processor designs, so when the company speaks up about its product roadmap, we're inclined to listen in close. The next generation of ARM system-on-chip has been dubbed Cortex-A15 and was expected to ship in 2013, but that's now been accelerated slightly to late 2012, which is when we're told to expect actual devices on sale with A15 silicon on board. Single- and dual-core variants will get us started, before quad-core options start filtering through in 2013. ARM promises a stunning fivefold improvement in performance over current Cortex-A9 SOCs and already has NVIDIA, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments signed up as licensees for that new hotness. So now even Samsung's "desktop-class" 2GHz dual-core chip that's slated for 2012 has a reason to look over its shoulder. Happy times!
IDC fails to learn from previous mistakes, issues 2015 smartphone predictions
The stat guardians at IDC are among the most reliable sources for keeping track of the latest developments in the smartphone market, but we've got to say their forecasts haven't always benefited from the same accuracy. It's with this disclaimer that we present you the world of 2015 as seen through the IDC prism. In just four years' time, says the data, Windows Phone 7 (or whatever version it reaches by then) will have ascended to occupy a fifth of the market and second spot overall behind Android, whose leading position is expected to stabilize somewhere around the 45 percent mark. Apple and RIM are projected to hold steady with shares close to where they are today. It has to be humbling for the IDC, which predicted Symbian would continue to dominate all the way into 2013, to now have to foretell of its almost complete extinction (a mere 0.2 percent) and total irrelevance in the smartphone market. Alas, while the new prediction sounds very reasonable today, four years of unknown unknowns is a mighty long time to try and forecast through, and we have a feeling we'll be looking back and chuckling at this within a few short months -- probably (hopefully!) in the midst of a massive webOS revival.
LG working on an NFC payment system for Europe, planning launch in 2012
All these upcoming NFC-equipped smartphones wouldn't be worth much without places to use them, so it's good to hear LG's announcement this week that it's working on providing the infrastructure for contactless payments. The Korean company has set its sights on Europe, where it's conducting beta testing of point-of-sale technology that will facilitate paying for goods and services by swiping your phone near an NFC sensor. We're not told whether that phone would necessarily have to be built by LG, though we imagine the company would be well served by including as many devices as possible and just taking its slice of the profits. Whatever LG does, it's looking increasingly safe to assume that having NFC on your phone will be a legitimate asset in the coming months (and not just if you live in Japan).
Motorola Mobility reports robust growth in last quarter, but predicts difficult times ahead
Yes, we are deep in Q4 2010 financial reporting season, and Motorola's freshly independent Mobility arm is latest to step up and deliver its figures. Total revenue over the past three months reached $3.4 billion, marking a 21 percent increase year-on-year, net revenue from mobile devices was $2.4 billion, up by 33 percent year-on-year, and handset shipments were a seemingly healthy 4.9 million. That figure's disappointed Wall Street estimates, however -- the collective expectation, according to MarketWatch, was 5.2 million -- and the net profit of $80 million is barely (for a company of this size) in the black. More doom and gloom is cast by Motorola itself, which is predicting a difficult first quarter of 2011 that will end with the company losing between 9 and 21 cents per share in net terms. Ah well, let's try to enjoy the sunshine of Moto making money today and forget the rainclouds of tomorrow.
When it comes to forecasting Apple's earnings, amateurs are better than the pros
The Challenge: predict seven key metrics of Apple's fiscal success over the past quarter -- such as sales numbers, profit margins, and gross revenue -- with the highest accuracy. The Competitors: In the blue corner, a bunch of amateur finance bloggers, and in the red corner, a cabal of professional analysts making mad dough at banks and trading houses. The Conclusion: whatever you're paying for your "expert" advice on the future financial wellbeing of Apple, or any other tech stock for that matter, stop. Just... stop.
iPad 2 will have rear and front-facing cameras, say multiple sources
Hey, it's December, what else are you going to do but monger rumors of the next iPad? Reuters has rounded up no less than four sources from within Apple's component suppliers, all expressing their belief that the hallowed tablet will be refreshed some time in early 2011. A pair of the tipsters could only go so far as to say that production at places like Wintek and Simplo is expected to ramp up in the first quarter, while the other two were more decisive in identifying the cause for the extra activity as Apple's next tablet iteration. As to the future iPad's camera or cameras, one source says it'll feature both a back-mounted and a front-facing module, with Largan and Genius identified as having received new orders from Cupertino for churning out imagers. Notably, the latter is currently also supplying the iPhone 4's photon collector and there's no confirmation that whatever they produce will inevitably land in an iPad 2, but the tea leaves seem to be in agreement: parts are targeted for a February shipment in preparation for an April iPad refresh. Whether the new slate arrives at that time, however, will be another matter altogether.
Square Enix lowers six-month financial forecast, cuts expected sales by $100M
It looks like Square Enix characters will have to hold that spiky hair with generic product, as the company lowered its earnings forecast today for the six months (first half of its fiscal year) ending September 30, 2010. The publisher reduced new sales expectations by 10.5 percent to ¥68 billion ($846 million), which is far below the ¥90.6 billion the company took in during the same period last year. Squeenix also lowered its net income expectations for the two quarters to ¥1.7 billion ($21 million), a reduction of just over 29 percent from the original forecast. The company said that the declining figures were due to the "challenging operating environment" in which new games experienced "relatively slow growth." Squeenix's operating income remains high, however, thanks to "profitable carryover sales of major titles released in March of the previous fiscal year" -- i.e., Final Fantasy 13 et al. Square Enix will release its actual second fiscal quarter results in the near future.
TUAW's Daily App: Weather HD for iPhone
You may already know all about Weather HD -- the app made a nice splash when it was released early in the iPad's life. But Vimov has just released it for the iPhone, and even on the smaller screen, it leaves quite an impression. The idea is that instead of a tiny little icon or a big number telling you the weather, you get a full, bright screen of whatever the weather's like near you (or what it's going to be like in an hourly or daily forecast). The app is super simple on purpose, so if you're looking for full maps, video, or more detailed information, you'll have to go elsewhere (I usually use the free Weather Channel app for more in-depth weather updates). Still, for just 99 cents, Weather HD is worth having around if all you need to check every once in a while is the temperature and forecast. And heck, if you already bought it for the iPad, the new version is universal, so you've got iPhone and iPod touch support anyway.
Motorola 'eager' to get into tablet market, but won't do so until next year
Motorola's been thinking about tablets for a while now, but according to Sanjay Jha, it won't be entering that flourishing new market segment until it's absolutely certain it'll have a product that's "competitive in the marketplace." Depending on how you perceive the Droid X, Moto might arguably be said to already have a tablet out on sale, but rumors have mostly circulated around a 10-inch slate device, most probably in partnership with Verizon and most likely using Android 3.0 as its OS. Google itself has admitted that Android won't be fit for tablets until Gingerbread is delivered, and Jha's reluctance to introduce any new hardware before 2011 seems to be motivated by a corresponding desire to have the latest and greatest version on board from the start. Can't say we blame him.
Sharp's e-reader ready to 'rival the iPad' by year's end, may have a 3D future
Sharp is going to launch its brand new e-reader in Japan this fall with US retail availability to follow by the end of the year. Riveting stuff, isn't it? Well, the company's President Mikio Katayama does his best to spice things up by proposing this device will aim "to rival the iPad," and it may well sport a color LCD if earlier indications still hold true, but what's really got us hot under the collar is the potential for 3D down the line. Katayama claims to have witnessed great enthusiasm for 3D -- particularly when it comes to games -- and posits it as a likely future direction for this new ebook reader. Multifunctional devices are what people want, he says, and since Sharp already has a 3D smartphone in the pipeline and a glasses-free 3D tablet display in the lab, we can't see many technical hurdles to the realization of his vision. Let's just hope his depth perception is accurate when it comes to measuring the interest in three-dee.
GameStop misses earnings target, used games make up biggest profits
[Image by moe_ on Flickr] Despite 99 new stores, continued strong used game sales and better performance than the rest of the retail video game industry, GameStop reported less-than-expected earnings for this year's second quarter, and delivered a fall forecast lower than analysts expected. Analysts were looking for $1.82 billion in sales this past quarter, but apparently the $1.8 billion GameStop earned in actual sales (31.4 percent of which came from used game sales) just wasn't good enough. Additionally, GameStop executives tried to convince analysts that they'd actually be saving money by spending $10 on a membership card and subscription to Game Informer, but analysts weren't interested, claiming that "all they wanted was to play Red Dead Redemption." Further attempts to sell the card also failed, despite assurances of 10 percent off used game purchases in the future.
ASUS downgrades Eee PC shipment forecast, blames iPad
Been waiting for evidence that the iPad will dent the netbook market? If you believe ASUS, that's already happened, with the Eee PC vendor reporting fewer sales in the second quarter relative to the first and downgrading expectations for the usual peak season of Q3. Apple's prodigious tablet is specifically named by ASUS CEO Jerry Shen as an invader that is "crowding out" netbook demand, though he remains firmly committed to the small and affordable laptop market. All the same, Shen does also point a finger to the horizon, where a trifecta of Eee Pads marches ever nearer with the intent to do battle with the iPad. So while netbooks aren't going away in a hurry, these latest numbers seem to suggest they're set to at least share the lower-end spotlight with touch-friendly slates, or rather Pads.
Bill Gates expects the web to be the best single source of education within 5 years
Bill Gates just might be the world's most famous college dropout (sorry, Kanye), but lest you think he's changed his mind about the educational establishment, he's got a few words of reassurance for you. As the closing speaker of the Techonomy 2010 conference, Bill dished out his vision of how learning will evolve over the next few years, stating his belief that no single university will be able to match the internet when it comes to providing the learning resources a student needs. Describing traditional studies as "place-based" and inefficient, he forecasts that university education will become five times less important within five years, with online lecture sources picking up the reins of enlightening our youth. In other news, Bill's pen-based tablet PC idea is going great!
ASUS planning an 8-inch grayscale LCD e-reader for October, pricing expected 'under $599'
Unless ASUS means "$400 under $599," we've got a feeling this e-reading device might as well not try its luck on the market. Nevertheless, word from Taiwan is that the company is indeed preparing an 8-inch LCD-based ebook reader -- with 64 levels of gray, no backlight, and fast refresh times -- to take on the E Ink-powered incumbents this October. Sounds very much like the Eee Tablet to us, but the headline feature of handwriting recognition isn't mentioned, so this could be the same or a slightly different device. A saving grace for this spendy slate may be ASUS' current negotiations for mobile carrier subsidies, which may prevent users from ever having to (directly) clash with that exorbitant price. That also suggests this 8-incher will have 3G connectivity on board, which might make it an appealing straddler of categories if it manages to accessorize itself with a robust web browser and healthy battery life. Let's wait and see, eh?
Windows Phone 7 coming to Europe in October, US in November, according to Microsoft COO (video)
Here's something that seems to have slipped the net from Kevin Turner's recent presentation on Windows Phone 7 devices. While discussing the move to Microsoft's next great hope in the mobile space, the Redmond COO told the world that the transition is expected to happen in the October timeframe across Europe, and in the November timeframe in the US. This is the most explicit anyone from Microsoft has been about the likely launch date for Windows Phone 7, and sets up the intriguing potentiality of Europeans getting to savor the goodness of the brand new OS ahead of their US brethren. See Kevin dishing the info on video after the break. [Thanks, Abed]
Lenovo promises LePad Android tablet for the end of the year
Liu Jun, Senior VP and President of Lenovo's Consumer Business Group, has revealed his company's intention to deliver an Android tablet by the end of this year. To be known as LePad, this apparent resurrection of the Skylight / U1 Hybrid R&D effort seems destined to follow LePhone in seeking its fortunes in China first before expanding out to the rest of the world. Lenovo's chairman did recently note that Apple's relative inaction toward mainland China creates opportunities for others, so this may well represent the IdeaPad maker's play for that burgeoning market. Of course, we'd love to be wrong and see a simultaneous release around the world -- it's about time the iPad got some legitimate competition in the slate realm.
HP Android tablet coming later than you think, or not at all
Although nothing official has come from HP on this front, we got some pretty solid word back in April that the American giant was mulling an Android tablet. As it turns out, what with the WebOS acquisition that followed and HP's dogged commitment to Windows 7, that Googly project has apparently slipped out of the limelight in HP HQ. Word from All Things Digital is that there'll be nothing forthcoming this year (as was tentatively expected) and if an HP Android tablet is to materialize, it'll have to come in 2011. The company seems to be in the midst of reallocating resources to its higher priority projects, and who knows, should that rumored Hurricane tablet blow us all away, Android might never gets its chance to shine at all.