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Vonage reports $14 million in income, loses 19,000 subscribers
Vonage may have raked in $216 million in revenue, netting itself $14 million in profit, but things still seem to be heading in the wrong direction for the company. We're not even talking about the sharp decrease in net income -- the $350 million made in the last quarter was thanks in large part to a one-time tax benefit. Revenue remained flat sequentially at $216 million, but was down slightly from the same time last year. What's more, churn had increased from Q4 and, despite signing up 165,000 new accounts, the VoIP carrier managed lose 19,000 subscribers -- and that's after dropping 14,000 last quarter. For more info check out the PR after the break.
Yes, people still read: e-book sales by UK publishers grew 54 percent in 2011
All hail the e-book! Seriously, if it weren't for this marvelous literary development, try saying with a straight face that you wouldn't at least take pause before adding a new title to your collection. Numbers are in from The Publisher's Association -- a group of 120 companies across the trade in the UK -- which reveals that e-book digital sales have increased 54 percent for the year 2011, and of that statistic, 13 percent of revenues came from academic and professional titles. As a sign of changing preferences, the total sales of both e-books and their traditional counterparts fell by two percent during the year -- and let's be honest, it's not hard to see which group fell short. Also reflective of the shift is the fact that average book prices fell by 1.3 percent during the year, which compares favorably to the UK's current inflation rate of 4.47 percent. Those interested in the full story will find the PR after the break.
Motorola Mobility loses $86 million in Q1, device shipments way down
Well, the first quarter of 2012 is officially over Motorola Mobility, and the financial news is rather sobering for the company. While revenues were up, the climb was modest, to just $3.1 billion. And that small bump in incoming cash was not enough to stave off another quarter of loses. In fact, after losing $80 million in Q4 of 2011, Moto lost $86 million in Q1 of 2012. The company continued to bleed cash in large part because shipments of mobile devices dropped off dramatically. Only 8.9 million devices were shipped in the quarter, down from 10.5 million in the last part of 2011. With 5.1 million of those being smartphones however, the phone division did manage to increase revenues by three percent. The one bright spot was the home segment which, thanks to its home gateways and broadcast goods, managed to make (that's right, not lose) $68 million, up from $53 million a year ago. For more numbers and charts check out the source link.
HP reclaims top spot in PC sales, market as a whole climbs 21 percent
Well, Apple's reign atop the list of the world's top PC makers was short lived. After clawing its way into the lead, if you counted the iPad as a PC, HP is back atop the heap -- even with Cupertino's tablet-inflated numbers. According to Canalys, the Palo Alto company shipped 15.8 million units in the first quarter of 2012, barely sneaking passed Apple by 40,000 computers. Of course, remove Apple's 11.8 million iPads, and it's not even a competition. Lenovo, Acer and Dell rounded out the top five, with the total market shooting up 21 percent over the same time last year. However, there is plenty of reason to believe we won't see client PC fly out the door at such an incredible rate. Amazingly, according to Canalys, tablets accounted for 40 percent of all PC shipments in the US. For more details check out the PR after the break.
Internet speeds drop around the world according to Akamai, adoption rate up
Here's an odd one: average connection speeds around the globe dropped 14 percent to just 2.3 Mbps during the last quarter of 2011. The drop off remains something of a mystery since the data used to calculate that result doesn't include mobile broadband (so its increased adoption can't be dragging down the whole) and Akamai offers no explanation. Still, it's not time to start panicking, just yet. Even though speeds in the US dropped 5.3 percent from the previous quarter, average connection rates are still up significantly over the previous year. Otherwise, things largely stayed the same. Global broadband adoption was steady at 66 percent and the US continued to trail its friends across the Pacific (by a lot) in the race for the fastest Internet connections. Interestingly, while the number of broadband connections stayed consistent the number of narrowband lines (under 256 Kbps) declined dramatically. Yet, the percentage of the world's population connected to the web managed to increase 2.1 percent quarter over quarter -- and 13 percent for the year. So, while it may seem that the internet had a temporary set back in Q4 of 2011, the long term trends look good. The number of people online is increasing, the average speeds being pulled down by those people is climbing and the number of folks stuck in the dial up era is dropping. To get a copy of the full report hit up the source.
TSMC 2012 Q1 results: profits down again as 20-nanometer process proves expensive
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has offered up its first quarter results for the year, revealing yet another middling quarter. While turnover was NT$105.51 billion ($3.6 billion) and net profit was NT$33.47 billion ($1.1 billion), that's still 7.7 percent down on the NT$36.28 it made in the same quarter last year. On the upside, the chip foundry, which produces silicon for plenty of the world's biggest electronics companies, managed to claw back some of those profit dips from Q4 of last year, suggesting milder climes may lie ahead. The company is also encouraged by strong demand for its new 28-nanometer chips, which should offset the $8.5 billion spent on developing them, alongside a forthcoming 20-nanometer facility. 28-nanometer hardware still only equates to 5 percent of overall revenue, which should grow as companies use up their older inventory. If you've got a currency convertor to hand, head on past the break for the detailed breakdown.
AT&T reports Q1 earnings: $31.8 billion in revenue, 5.5 million smartphones sold
Sure, there was no new iPhone to boost its smartphone sales this quarter, but the carrier still managed to push 5.5 million of the devices out the door, while activating 4.3 million Apple-branded handsets. The company beat analyst predictions by raking in $31.8 billion in revenue and pocketing $3.6 billion of that as income, up from $3.4 billion over the same time period last year. Things are looking good for the company as both U-Verse and its wireless business grew revenues dramatically -- by 38.2 percent and 19.9 percent, respectively. Growth on the cellular side is in large part thanks to the 726,000 net subscriber adds. Of particular interest is the growth in so-called "branded-computing" subscriptions, which includes tethering plans and tablets. There, AT&T has seen a growth of 70 percent over last year, reaching 5.8 million customers (including 460,000 added last quarter). For more financial fun check out the PR after the break.
Facebook updates S-1, adds Q1 earnings, revenue up 45% over last year
Facebook just filed an amended S-1 (that all important document that officially announces its public offering plans) with some new financial info. Now included in the charts and graphs is everything you wanted to know about Q1 of 2012 at Facebook (but were afraid to ask). The new SEC filing reveals that revenues are way up at the social network over last year (a whopping 45 percent higher than Q1 of 2011), but down slightly from last quarter (six percent), settling at a more than respectable $1.058 billion. Of the cash it took in, $872 million of it was ad revenue, which is down from Q4 of 2011 ($943 million) but up significantly from Q1 of last year ($731 million). Facebook was even able to slap a per-user amount on its 900 million active monthly members -- $1.21 -- that's the average revenue for each person with an account at the site. Of course, membership has continued to grow, with 532 million stopping by daily, up from 372 million just a year ago. As for that Instagram purchase, it looks like the widely reported $1 billion figure wasn't entirely accurate -- at least not when talking cold, hard cash. Only $300 million was turned over in immediately spendable currency, the rest of the deal involved 23 million shares of common stock. If you're a sucker for financials hit up the source link.
AMD reports net loss of $590 million for Q1 2012, calls that 'solid results'
We're not sure about you, but we wouldn't call losing over half a billion dollars "solid results." Still, we're not 100 percent ready to rain on AMD's parade yet. The non-GAAP results (which disregard a pile of one-time charges and investments) turn the $590 million loss into a $92 million profit. Still, the GAAP results do make two straight quarters of losses and revenue clearly continued to decline, falling to $1.59 billion. That's down six percent from last quarter and two percent from the same time period last year. Revenue from the graphics division held steady from last quarter, though, it's down seven percent year-over-year. For more financial fun hit up the PR after the break.
Nokia's Q1 2012 financials: $9 billion in sales can't stop a $1.7 billion loss
Nokia's released the bundle of spreadsheets that comprise its 2012 Q1 financials, just a week after it acknowledged that it would make a loss, despite bullish sales of the new Lumia 900. The numbers reveal that the company had net sales of €7.4 billion ($9.7 billion), down from €10.4 billion ($13.6 billion) at the start of last year. Net sales are down 30 percent year-on-year, which means the company's posting a loss of €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) for the first three months of 2012. That loss is broken down as €772 million to restructure Nokia Siemens Networks, €101 million to restructure the Devices & Services and Location & Commerce departments, principally in shedding employees and relocating its factories to Asia. It had forecasted an operating margin of three percent below "break even," and says it's likely to remain that way well into the second quarter. Stephen Elop pointed out that much of the loss is due to both increased competition and the costs of restructuring, but also seemed to tacitly confirm rumors we'd heard that UK carriers have been resistant to Nokia's new direction, saying that establishing momentum in the country has been "challenging." However, it's still promising to arrest the slump and in a statement to Moody's on Monday, the company pledged that it was prioritizing "cash conservation" exercises, although its liquid cash reserves have fallen 24% in a year, meaning that the company's only got €4.8 billion ($6.3 billion) put aside for a rainy day.
Intel reports $12.9 billion in revenue for Q1 of 2012, breaks no records
While it's hard to get upset when your company is raking in just shy of $13 billion over just three months, we're sure Intel's investors are a little sad to see revenue drop across all business divisions. With a net income of $2.7 billion, profits dropped nearly 19 percent from last quarter and everyone from the data center group to the PC client group saw revenues fall by significant margins. There's no reason to worry about Chipzilla, though. The company's seemingly constant record smashing quarters had to come to an end sometime and we're sure with its entrance into the smartphone market this year new streams of revenue will start pouring in shortly. Check out the source link for all the financial nitty gritty.
Google reports $10.65 billion in revenue for Q1 2012, splits stock
Google just announced its earnings for Q1 of 2012 and the company did not disappoint. It raked in $10.65 billion, a full 24 percent higher than last year for the same time period and a hefty improvement over last quarter. Of that rather sizable chunk of cash, $10.2 billion came from advertising revenues -- $7.3 billion of that placed on Google's own properties. GAAP net income for the quarter was $2.89 billion, more than twice that of Q1 2011, which brings its total war chest to $49.3 billion in cash on hand. Perhaps the biggest news for investors, though, is the 2-for-1 stock split, which is a perfect accompaniment for the skyrocketing price. It's worth noting however, that this new stock is a new class of non-voting shares. For more info check out the PR after the break and don't miss the letter from Larry Page and Sergey Brin at the source link.
China may ship more smartphones than the US this year
The rapid modernization of China shouldn't really come as a shock anymore. But, you might be a bit surprised to hear that the venerable IDC is predicting the world's most populous country will soon surpass the US in smartphone shipments. The research agency is predicting the People's Republic will account for 20.7 percent of the global smartphone market by the end of 2012, narrowly edging out the US by 0.1 percent. That gap is only expected to grow over the next several years as mobile broadband becomes more prevalent in the country and it continues to urbanize. Check out the PR after the break for more details.
February's gaming sales a mixed bag: up for the month, down for the year
At this point, every time NPD releases its numbers, the video game industry collectively holds its breath. The last couple of months have not been kind, as hardware sales continued to drop. But, in February there was finally some good news -- console sales were 87 percent over January. More impressively, that jump only falls to 62 percent if you exclude the Vita. Still, after so many disappointing months, even that stratospheric jump left sales 18 percent lower than the same period last year. Even when taking software into account sales were down 20 percent -- with the industry as a whole raking in just $1.06 billion last month, down from the $1.33 billion the previous February. Individually there was good news for companies, though. Nintendo saw Super Mario Galaxy cross the five million mark, while all of its consoles (the DS, 3DS and Wii) all saw more than 50 percent spikes in their sales compared to January. Meanwhile, Microsoft held on to its number one slot by moving 426,000 Xbox 360s. Hit up the various source links for more info.
TERA recaps the most recent closed beta weekend, concludes that PvP players enjoy PvP
TERA has just wrapped up its most recent closed beta weekend and is aiming at another this coming Friday. In this latest test, players finally got to take part in the game's PvP offerings, and the official postmortem leads to an ironclad conclusion: PvP players really enjoy killing one another. Across the beta's two PvP servers, players racked up a total of 50,000 kills, with over 150,000 battles fought. And that's not even factoring in the number of guild battles taking place with over 2,000 guilds formed. As it turns out, it wasn't just the players doing the testing; the developers were also putting together a small guild and going out among the people, as it were. It seems as if the game's PvP is humming along smoothly, and with the next closed beta coming up in just a couple of days, it'll be worth watching to see how the rest of the game stacks up. And for those players participating in the closed beta weekends, the third edition begins Friday!
Apple introduces iPhoto for iPad, updates Garage Band, iMovie and iWork
Apple's busy introducing a whole bunch of new apps to go along with its shiny new iPad, and iPhoto is near the top of the list. The "reinvention" of the iconic photo software will be available today for $4.99, and offers a plethora of features, such as bezel gestures, effects, multi-touch editing and direct beaming. You can also easily tweak white balance, exposure and saturation, and you can add geotags, notes and captions. Another highlight of the new iPhoto is the Journal, which allows you to pick and choose certain images to push to iCloud for web viewing. Interestingly, the announcement comes right on the heels of Adobe's competitive offering. To complete the circle of iLife at today's event, Apple announced significant updates to iWork, iMovie and Garage Band. iWork's refresh utilizes the new iPad's Retina display and offers 3D charts, and each individual app -- Keynote 1.6, Numbers 1.6 and Pages 1.6 -- will be ready for purchase today for $9.99 (or free, if you already have the apps). Next up is iMovie, available for $4.99, which now offers the ability to turn your HD movies into trailers and adds a few more advanced editing tools. Finally, Garage Band introduces a new feature called Jam Session, which lets you and three of your friends connect iOS devices together wirelessly and play together in real-time. Just as before, newbies can get the updated app for $4.99. For more coverage of Apple's iPad event, visit our hub!
Sprint reveals it spent $15.5 billion to fuel its iPhone hunger
Sprint's SEC filings have revealed that the carrier has committed to purchasing $15.5 billion worth of iPhones as part of the long-promised $20 billion gamble. If each handset costs around $630 at trade, then we're talking about the network holding nearly 24 million units. Given that the company most recently ate a loss of $1.3 billion, most of which was caused by carrier subsidies for the 4S, there's a genuine fear that the company won't be able to make enough back on each customer to offset the initial outlay. Given the Baller-style purchasing decisions of Dan Hesse of late, we'll be watching how this unfolds with great interest and our fingers very firmly crossed.
Google: 450,000 Android Apps now available to 300 million devices
If you hadn't noticed, it's Mobile World Congress this week and Google's showing off its enormous booth packed to the gills with smiling green Androids. Andy Rubin insouciantly added that the Android Marketplace has reached its latest milestone: there are now 450,000 apps available for the platform. Other pertinent stats are that over a billion apps are downloaded every month and that 850,000 Android devices are activated each day -- meaning that there's more than 300 million of them worldwide. Of course, that's not the real story here at MWC, it's that the company have brought along a bedazzling booth for guests to glue as many false jewels to their Galaxy Nexus back-plate as their self-respect can handle.
OMAP 5's dual A15 cores wipe the floor with four A9s in browsing benchmark
We've seen Texas Instrument's OMAP 5 in action, but we haven't been able to pit it directly against a competitor. The Dallas company must be growing more and more confident in its product however, as its posted a video demoing its pair of A15 cores alongside an unspecified quad-core A9 part -- presumably the Tegra 3. The video shows the next-gen TI part powering through the EEMBC BrowsingBench in 95 seconds, while its opposition takes a whopping 201. What's more, this thrashing was performed by an 800MHz part -- the four A9s were clocked at 1.3GHz. Of course, Tegra 3s are already in shipping products, while the OMAP 5 might not find a home in consumer devices before 2013. It's also unclear just how much of a hit these new high-powered ARM cores will have on battery life or how much the pair of M4 companion cores helped in the benchmark. Head on after the break to watch a pair of tablets load up 20 websites in quick succession.
Barnes & Noble 2012 Q3 Report: loss-making Nook generates sales, tears
It's that time of the year when Barnes & Noble's accountants reveal the figures for the quarter to determine if the age of print is over. Turns out there's some good news for bookseller. Overall sales for the chain increased five percent: the company took $2.4 billion through the cash registers. That was split $1.49 billion (up two percent) in high-street retail, online sales took $420 million (up 32 percent year-on-year) and the Nook in all its forms and glories took $542 million (up 38 percent). The only grey cloud was that sales in college-only stores dropped three percent, thanks in part to renting textbooks to impecunious freshmen. They're probably all using that money on buying digital content on their Nooks: digital content purchases increased by 85 percent in a single quarter. Like rival Amazon, it wouldn't release how many devices were sold, except to say it likely maintained its market share. However, all of that (pretty) good news is a bit of a smokescreen: B&N won't reveal its profits after interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization has been deducted. Pre ITDA income dropped 12 percent from the same period in 2011 and the company has revealed that the BN.com and Nook businesses made a combined loss of $94 million, with annual income looking to be in negative figures. Update: A tidbit from the conference call, the company believes the device currently holds around 30 percent of the overall e-reader market: using numbers direct from the publishers themselves.
