q22018
Latest
The Versa smartwatch is saving Fitbit
There's little doubt that Fitbit's Versa smartwatch has sold well, but apparently it's selling so well that it might just dig the company out of its financial hole. Alongside its latest earnings, Fitbit provided a rosy outlook indicating that it expected to break even in the third quarter of 2018, and would return to "growth and profitability" sometime in the second half of the year. It didn't explicitly credit the Versa with the turnaround, but it wasn't shy about touting the importance of the newer, more affordable smartwatch to its bottom line.
Tesla aims to make 10,000 Model 3 cars per week in 2019
Now that Tesla is finally making over 5,000 Model 3 cars per week, it's eager to move to the next production goal... and it knows it needs to pick up the pace. As part of its second quarter earnings release, the automaker signaled plans to ramp up production to 10,000 Model 3 units per week sometime in 2019. The "majority" of its production lines would be ready for that volume by the end of 2018, it said, but it will still have to boost output in "certain places."
Samsung looks to foldable OLEDs as phone sales slow down
As expected, Samsung's Q2 2018 earnings report shows that operating profit is still up from last year and net profit for the same periods came in 0.1 percent lower as growth is slowing. While its memory chip and processor businesses remain strong, the premium smartphone market is "sluggish" and has more competition, so it's introducing the new Galaxy Note slightly earlier this year to expand sales. The new Note 9 will be revealed on August 9th, and could show us what Samsung has planned for its "unbreakable" flexible OLED technology. Samsung said it expected sales of flexible OLED to rebound in the second half, and said "the Company will incorporate more value-added features into panels and reinforce its competencies in new applications such as foldable displays" like the YOUM prototypes it showed off a few years ago or the device already rumored for launch in 2019.
Netflix's shows didn't pull in as many new customers as expected
Netflix is spending billions of dollars on new shows and movies this year, with an expectation that this will add to its subscriber base. Unfortunately, over the last three months, that plan didn't work quite as well as it had predicted. In April the company notched 125 million subscribers and predicted it would add 6.2 million more. Today it announced numbers (PDF) that CEO Reed Hastings called "strong but not stellar" growing by 5.15 million customers worldwide with about 670,000 of in the US compared to the 1.2 million it anticipated. Even that number isn't too shabby, since last year during the same period it added 5.2 million people to pass the 100 million subscriber mark. The letter did highlight all of those Emmy nominations, which show that it has delivered quality along with the quantity, plus much of the highly-anticipated content that has yet to debut in 2018. What it didn't go into was any note of the "Ultra" price testing users recently spotted in Europe, or the public response to possible feature restrictions and higher prices. Netflix will stream a video of its earnings call at 6 PM ET on YouTube, and if we hear any interesting answers to those questions or others then we will update this post. Update: The video call is live (embedded after the break), and begins with execs saying the "fundamentals have never been stronger" citing the forecasting as incorrect this time more than any factor slowing growth.
Samsung's Galaxy S9 couldn't keep profit growth on pace in Q2
Samsung's projected operating profit for April to June of 2018 is around $700 million more than its profit from the same period last year. At $13.2 billion, though, it's still going to be much smaller than the $14 and the $14.4 billion profit it posted in the last quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018, respectively. Samsung's earnings guidance didn't reveal why it wasn't able to beat its own numbers, but according to Bloomberg, one of the reasons is the weaker-than-expected sales of the Galaxy S9.
