Q3 2019
Latest
Huawei boosts smartphone sales in China by a whopping 66 percent
In spite of US sanctions, Huawei is doing just fine in China. The company's domestic smartphone shipments increased 66 percent year-over-year, according to a report by market research firm Canalys. In the last quarter, Huawei shipped 41.5 million devices in China, giving it a record-high market share of 42 percent. At least some of that success, might be attributed to customers purchasing Huawei devices as a rebellion against US sanctions and foreign pressure.
HBO Max can't come fast enough for AT&T
If AT&T's convoluted TV streaming options didn't convince you that the company was struggling, maybe its Q3 earnings will. According to the latest earnings report, released today, the company's revenue dropped 2.5 percent, with Warner Media revenue falling 4.4 percent, in the third quarter. It lost 1.2 million premium TV subscribers, and AT&T Now lost nearly 200,000 subscribers.
Spotify's podcast strategy is starting to pay off
Spotify's strategy of owning a chunk of the podcast game appears to be paying off, at least according to its latest financial report. In the third quarter of 2019, Spotify says it saw "exponential growth" in podcasts, with a 39 percent increase in listens in just three months. The US is the biggest consumer of the format, but Spotify is also seeing bumps in a number of European countries. And those people who come to Spotify for podcasts are, according to the company, more likely to sign up for premium than others.
Twitter says it's better at spotting abusive tweets than users
Twitter says it has achieved a major milestone in its attempts to improve the "health" of its platform. According to the company's most recent earnings report, 50 percent of abusive tweets removed this past quarter were pulled before a user even flagged the content. That's up from 38 percent in Q1. Twitter adds that it achieved the milestone on the back of improvements it made to its machine learning-based moderation algorithms, which in turn forward more tweets to the company's employees to scrutinize.
Twitter adds more users, but finds it hard to make money from them
In the last three months, Twitter added six million more users, but couldn't manage to sell any more ads to those eyeballs. At least, not in quantities enough to boost its bottom line, with net profit remaining the same as it was in the previous quarter. Then, as now, Twitter made $37 million in profit which, while nothing to sniff at, hints that the company may have a stasis problem.
Snap continues to add new users
After struggling to grow its user base for awhile, Snap has recently managed to make some headway in that mission. Its last earnings report showed the company managed to grow its daily active user (DAU) number seven percent over the quarter prior. From its third-quarter results released today, it appears Snap is continuing to do well. In the last quarter, the company managed to add 7 million users. Today, Snap is reporting that its DAUs have increased by 13 percent from the same period last year, with a total of 210 million users to date.
Samsung could be heading for a 50 percent profit drop
Samsung's earnings guidance for the third quarter of 2019 shows that things haven't significantly improved for the tech giant over the past months. The Korean conglomerate expects another profit slump for the three-month period that ended in September: in particular, it believes it will post an operating profit of around 7.7 trillion Korean won (US$6.44 billion). That's higher than the 6.6 trillion won (US$5.5 billion) profit Samsung made in the second quarter, but it's also down 56 percent from the same period in 2018 when the company made 17.57 trillion won (US$14.7 billion) in profit.
Tesla's Q3 electric car deliveries set another record
Tesla's record-setting second quarter deliveries weren't a fluke, it seems. The EV builder has broken the record again with its initial delivery estimates for the third quarter, with about 97,000 cars reaching customers over the summer. That's not a huge leap over the 95,356 EVs delivered in Q2, but it's a stark contrast to the sharp drop-off at the start of 2019. There's at least some sustained interest, then.
Apple's wearables and services made up for weak iPhone sales
Apple's latest earnings report is out, and as many had expected, it's very much on-trend with the numbers we've seen coming out of Cupertino this year. The company managed to grow its overall revenue a little, raking in a total of $53.8 billion compared to $53.3 billion this time last year. That's... not a huge amount of growth, but it was enough to claim an all-time Q3 revenue record, according to CEO Tim Cook. Unfortunately, Apple's iPhone sales showed little sign of recovering — the company saw just under $26 billion in iPhone sales this quarter, continuing a streak of year-over-year declines.
