q4 2011
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Panasonic racks up a record loss for 2012, looks forward to profits and a partner for OLED TVs
Panasonic's yearly earnings are in and the red ink added up to a record $9.7 billion net loss for 2011. Number one on incoming president Kazuhiro Tsuga's list is turning around the company's TV division, where its heavy investments in both plasma and LCD manufacturing resulted in heavy losses. Currently the company expects a better result in both next year after 2011's write downs and restructuring, although its projections see total sales falling from 17.3 million last year to 15.5 million. Panasonic is expected to follow Samsung and LG into large screen OLED HDTV production and outgoing prez Fumio Ohtsubo mentioned it would likely look for a partner there. Sumitomo has been rumored as a potential ally in the past, though a preference for run-flat tires could not be confirmed at press time.
Sony's final 2011 report shows a record net loss, optimism for 2012
After a slew of bad news and drastically restated projections, Sony has reported the numbers for its full 2011 financial year and as expected, they're not good. The company experienced a record net loss of 456.7 billion yen ($5.73 billion) and an operating loss of 67.3 billion yen. The good news to look forward to however, is that it currently expects an operating profit of 180 billion yen for next year. For the year, it also noted sales of 13.9 million units for the PlayStation 3, 6.8 million PSPs/PS Vitas, 19.6 million LCD TVs and 21 million cameras. Next year, Sony is looking to move 16 million PS3s and 33 million smartphones. New CEO Kaz Hirai has detailed the "One Sony" strategy he hopes will bring the company back to financial health but with its current worth standing at just a fraction of competitors like Samsung and Apple (Reuters pegs it at 10 percent and 3 percent, respectively), the electronics giant has a long, long way to go. Hit the source link below for more dirty financial details, slideshows and spreadsheets.
Logitech president celebrates end-of-year earnings with management cull
Logitech's Q4 and full-year report makes for uncomfortable reading. Despite profits increasing by a factor of nine in the last quarter of the year, overall annual profit fell 44 percent from $143 million to $71 million. The company has already parachuted in former Whirlpool exec. Bracken P. Darrel to turn things around and recover the losses made when the company went big on Google TV. His first action has been to kick-start a restructuring operation that will save $80 million in costs, starting by cutting a whole management layer -- demoting current product VP Junien Labrousse and firing sales VP Werner Heid. Mr. Darrell is now working directly with his team on a new lineup of "stronger" products to be unveiled later this quarter, with an emphasis on Windows 8 peripherals and LifeSize video conferencing gear. [Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Nokia is the largest Windows Phone maker in the world, after one quarter
While we can't really say that we're surprised, Nokia has snagged the top spot for Windows Phone devices. Strategy Analytics reports that the Finnish smartphone maker now sits atop the global charts for the Microsoft mobile OS after being in the game for just one quarter. Nokia overtook HTC and Samsung to claim a 33% market share with 0.9 million out of the 2.7 million units shipped in Q4. Aided by the Lumia family's expansion to several new territories and the 36% growth of the platform overall for the quarter, the company has taken "an encouraging baby step forward." If you're itching for more details, hit up the source link below.
MetroPCS Q4 results are in: increased revenue, slowing growth
The nation's fifth largest wireless provider -- MetroPCS -- has checked in with its Q4 2011 financials, and on the whole, the company looks to be doing quite well. Metro reported $1.2 billion in consolidated quarterly revenues and $362 million in earnings, an increase of 16% and 15% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. A few other positive vitals: average revenue per user (ARPU) was up $0.76, net income rose to $77 million and churn dropped 80 basis points from 4.5% in Q3 to 3.7% in Q4. Two small blemishes can be found in the net customer additions and cost per user (CPU) columns. While MetroPCS added well over 197,000 new customers in Q4, the rate at which it grew slowed dramatically -- down 34% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. The company's CPU also rose $1.17 during that same period -- which can be partially attributed to LTE network services, along with general expansion and operating costs. One other mildly unfortunate note was word that voice over LTE wouldn't be launching till the second half of the year, slightly later than we had been anticipating. Taking all that into consideration, it was still a strong quarterly showing from the value-centered wireless carrier.
NPD: Apple grabs over a quarter of the mobile PC business in Q4 2011 (including iPads), HP tops with laptops
Just what is a "mobile PC" these days? According to market research firm NPD, that category now includes both tablets and laptops -- and by that definition, Apple is unsurprisingly way ahead of its competitors. Based on its preliminary numbers, Apple shipped 23.4 million mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2011 (nearly 80 percent of which were iPads), which was enough to snag a market share of 26.6 percent (and keep it in the top spot for the year). In contrast, the four companies rounding out the top five relied almost entirely on laptops to fill their numbers, with HP coming in at just under a 10 percent market share, followed by Dell, Acer and Lenovo. Looking just at laptops, however, HP comes in first with a 15.5 percent market share, while Apple falls to fifth with just over eight percent. As for tablets, Apple is estimated to have a 59 percent market share for Q4, followed by Amazon at 16.7 percent (based on shipments of 5.3 million), and Samsung, ASUS and Barnes & Noble each in single digits. Additional numbers can be found in the press release after the break and at the source link below.
T-Mobile lost more customers in Q4, will launch LTE in 2013 with AWS spectrum from AT&T
In T-Mobile USA's first earnings report since the proposed merger with AT&T fell through in December, it noted a loss of 802,000 customers in Q4 (being the only carrier not to have the iPhone is a lonely, lonely circumstance). But there is some good news -- thanks to the AWS spectrum it's receiving due to the termination of said deal, it plans to launch LTE services in 2013. Additionally, it plans to spend $4 billion rolling out HSPA+3G/4G services on the 1900 MHz band which should mean high speed data access (in some areas) for previously unsupported devices like the iPhone 4/4S. Also, since both T-Mobile and AT&T use AWS spectrum for LTE, we could see existing (and future) unlocked devices that are compatible with both networks. For now, T-Mobile is focusing on the new devices it's delivering like the just-announced Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G, and its addition of 276,000 prepaid customers. Check out the full report with all the details and dollar amounts after the break.
Amazon elbows past Samsung for No. 2 tablet spot in Q4, according to IHS
Amazon had some serious trombone action going on last year -- what with all the horn tooting it did about Kindle Fire demand. Turns out Amazon was on to something, as the company has apparently grabbed the No. 2 spot from Samsung for tablet sales in the last quarter, according to research firm IHS iSuppli. Based on its numbers, Amazon sold 3.89 million tablets during the fourth quarter, eclipsing Samsung's 2.14 million units. The numbers equal a 14 percent share of the tablet market for Amazon while Samsung grabbed an 8 percent share, down from 11 percent in the third quarter. The brisk sales came at a price for Amazon, which saw fourth-quarter profits drop since it sold Kindle Fire tablets at a loss. Amazon's tablet sales also were still below the 15.4 million iPads sold by Apple for the period. All the competition is apparently taking a bite out of Apple's market share, however, which fell to 62 percent in 2011, compared to 87 percent in 2010. Samsung did manage to hold on to the No. 2 spot for the year, but with rumors already swirling about new iPads plus the Galaxy Note 10.1, the tablet wars aren't likely to cool off anytime soon.
Comcast slows the flood of video customer losses in Q4 2011
It's not often that a company announced it lost 17,000 customers in a quarter and that's considered good news, but for Comcast that's exactly the case when it comes to cable TV. Compared to the 135,000 customers lost in the same period a year ago (which was also lower than the year that preceded it), it's a slowing of a trend over the last few years and if you believe cord cutting is taking a toll on Big Cable, could indicate that is tailing off as well. That's not all of the good news however, as it also increased the number of customers picking up extra services like internet and phone. We didn't get too many tidbits from the earnings call, but did hear a mention that it's investing in new cloud-based software for its TV boxes -- hopefully that means we'll see that new Xfinity TV guide roll out widely sooner rather than later.
Acer Financials: meager 2011 Q4 profit, massive annual loss
Acer was hoping for the gloom to lift after two bad quarters, but it can hardly call its latest financials stellar. It scraped a slender $2.4 million profit in the quarter, which wasn't enough to prevent the company posting an overall annual loss of $212 million. It blamed one off charges and operational and strategic adjustments (though no mention of the impending war with Lenovo over Gianfranco Lanci) for the bad year. The terse release (after the break) claims the business is becoming "more healthy and stable," which is a good way to paint a quarter-on-quarter drop of 98.4 percent turnover.
Gartner: Apple leads the way among smartphone vendors, Android sees slight decline
Gartner's latest bundle of smartphone stats has just hit the wires, bringing with it some encouraging news for the folks in Cupertino. According to the firm's Q4 report, Apple finished 2011 as the world's top smartphone vendor by market share (19 percent), thanks to a Q4 that saw the company grab 23.8 percent of the market. During the quarter, Apple sold some 35.5 million handsets to end users, marking a mildly insane 121.4 percent increase from Q4 2010. This surge also helped Apple overtake LG to become the world's third largest seller of all mobile phones, with a 7.4 percent market share last quarter, trailing only Nokia (23.4 percent) and Samsung (19.4 percent). Nokia, in fact, saw some of its lead wither away during Q4, with sales dropping 8.7 percent over the year, to 111.7 million units. On the OS front, meanwhile, Android continues to dominate Q4 with 50.9 percent of the smartphone market, but that's slightly down from the previous quarter, when it grabbed a little less than 53 percent. Gartner attributes some of this to increased sales of the iPhone 4S, though it expects iOS' share to decline over the next "couple of quarters," as fewer users upgrade to the company's latest handset. For more insight and analysis, check out the full press release, after the break.
Zynga lost over $400 million in 2011 while 58.5 million people played its games every day
Zynga's 2011 financial report is chock full of unexciting numbers (we'll get to them in a moment, if that's your kind of thing), but it does contain a few interesting morsels. For instance, Zynga completely owned the top five most played games on Facebook -- according to daily active user numbers -- refuting a report from Facebook late last year which fudged the numbers to bizarre effect.The company dominated Facebook's annual game charts with 54 million of the approximately 800 million users playing Zynga games every single day in Q4 (roughly 4.25 million fewer than Zynga's annual average DAUs). And those users were buying up enough microtransacted goods to earn Zynga $1.07 billion solely online for the entirety of 2011, with a total of $1.14 billion earned in revenue for the year.Now here's the bad news: despite earning over $1 billion in 2011, the company ended up with a net loss for the year of $404.3 million. According to the quarterly financials press release, Zynga paid out $510 million for "stock-based compensation expense for restricted stock units issued to employees" -- compensation it didn't have to pay until the company went public. The company's stock is currently trading $4.35 north of its introductory $10 price per share.
Sprint announces Q4 2011 results: the iPhone brings in 720,000 new customers
Following its bittersweet Q3, the latest financial report from Sprint this quarter offers up another mixed bag of news. Net operating losses totalled $438 million, more than the $139 million posted in the same quarter last year. It suffered a staggering $1.3 billion net loss (much of that due to upfront costs associated with launching the iPhone), dwarfing the Q3's $301 million losses. Operating revenue increases were, however, the largest in the last five years, up to $8.72 billion from $8.3 billion. Net subscribers now total 55 million, with 33 million postpaid, 14.8 million prepaid and around 7.2 million arriving from wholesale, adding an extra 1.6 million Sprint customers in the last quarter. This was also the first time in a long while that new subscribers on the Sprint platform outpaced losses at the Nextel and wireline businesses. Sprint hoped to see its iPhone draw customers into its network, putting it toe-to-toe with the bigger carriers, and it largely did, with 40 percent of the 1.8 million iPhones sold landing directly in the hands of new customers. However, the higher subsidy costs of the iPhone was also responsible for these tougher financial results. Last year also saw the tentative launch of Sprint's LTE network, and that's where the future appears to be for the carrier, with its forward-looking statement hinging on exactly how fast they're able to grab the 4G bull by the horns and get it into their customers' hands. Compatibility with Clearwire's next generation network is mentioned here, as is the "financial performance of Clearwire and its ability to build, operate, and maintain its 4G network." Lightsquared, however, was conspicuously absent from Sprint's future machinations.
NPD: iPhones recover market share in Q4 2011, but Android draws the first-timer crowds
According to the latest research from the NPD group, Apple has got its second wind in smartphone sales. In the same quarter that saw the iPhone 4S reinvent the wheel obey our every vocal whim, the trio of available models soaked up a total of 43 percent of the US smartphone market in Q4 2012, apparently gnawing away at Android's market share of 53 percent held during the rest of 2011. However, Google's mobile OS appears to be the debutante smartphone of choice, cornering 57 percent of new purchases, with 34 percent going for Apple. The remaining 9 percent is distributed between the smartphone also-rans, with the likes of Windows Phone and BlackBerry languishing in that anonymous grey bar at the top. The top five handsets from NPD's Mobile Phone Track service is an Apple and Samsung love-in, with iOS devices claiming the three top spots, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S II (we assume collectively) and the Galaxy S 4G. NPD's blow-by-blow commentary on this increasingly two-horse race awaits below.
HTC admits its bulky, quick-dying LTE phones kinda suck
After a long streak of skyrocketing earnings, HTC's climb towards the stars seems to have stalled. Q4 was not kind to the company and CFO Winston Yung thinks he knows the reason why. During the today's earnings call Yung admitted that HTC "dropped the ball" with its selection of LTE devices. He conceded that the bulky handsets simply failed on a design and spec level -- especially when it came to battery life -- and were not selling nearly as well as expected. Unsurprisingly, the company promises to turn its fortunes around with the next product cycle, which is rumored to kick off at MWC with the Ville.
HTC's 2011 Q4: good summer, bad winter
HTC's big 2011 was limited to those warm summer months, when everyone wanted a smartphone for the beach. Now the accountants have confirmed HTC's initial statement: fourth quarter revenues were down 2.49 percent (year on year). It made 101.42 billion Taiwanese dollars (just under $3.5 billion) in the last three months of the year, which looks worse than it is because of the blockbuster 135.8 Taiwanese dollar takings in Q3. Overall year on year revenue was up by 67.09 percent, but profits were down 11.88 percent, with the company saying the outlook won't get any better in the first quarter, but should pick up when it begins the process of shedding a few pounds phones.
IDC: Nokia, Samsung, Apple are the new top 3 handset makers
The latest figures are in from IDC: the top three global smartphone makers are Nokia, Samsung and Apple, in that order. Drilling down into the figures finds some surprises: Cupertino's third-place with only 8.7 percent of the market, while the giants of Korea and Finland are duking it out with 22.8 percent and 26.6 respectively. LG and ZTE are tied for fourth, but that's hardly good news for Goldstar, given that it's lost a staggering 42.2 percent of its market share in the last twelve months (Nokia was the other loser, eating 8.2 percent). The cause for the drop is in part the world's rejection of feature-phones (dropped faster than fashionistas rightly abandoned Ugg Boots and Jeggings) as millions upgraded to smartphones. After the break we've got the tables in full for anyone who wants to have their mind blown at the sheer quantity of handsets shipped in the last year, both financial and calendar.
LG finally shows a profit from cellphones, record high flat-panel shipments in Q4 earnings
LG has revealed its earnings statements for the fourth quarter of 2011 and the full year, and it managed to notch an operating profit of 23 billion won ($20.5 million), boosted by a 10 billion won operating profit in its handset division. That was despite lower sales compared to the previous quarter (17.7 million compared to 21.1 million), with higher sales of its new Optimus LTE and lower sales of less profitable dumbphones. It also had solid results in TVs with an operating profit of 150 billion won and record shipments of 8.8 million units, thanks to demand for its higher end models over the holidays. Check out the slides in the PDF linked below for notes on how LG plans to dominate 2012 with more LTE, 3D and air conditioners, although we'd just recommend moving to Level 5 of the Kobe System.
Amazon announces Q4 2011 results: sales jump to $17.43 billion, but profits drop 58 percent
Amazon's just announced its earnings for the fourth quarter of the year, and it's a bit of a mixed bag. While net sales were up 35 percent year-over-year to $17.43 billion, net income dropped a hefty 58 percent to $177 million, or 38 cents a share -- that's off analysts' expectations, who were looking for sales in the neighborhood of $18.3 billion and earnings of 17 cents a share. As always, the company is remaining mum on any specific Kindle sales figures, but it says that sales of all Kindle devices nearly tripled over the holiday shopping season, and that the Kindle Fire remains the bestselling item across all of the products it offers; of course, the loss it's taking on each one is also one of the big reasons for that drop in profits. Specific figures are equally hard to come by for some of Amazon's other services, but the company says the number of Appstore for Android customers has nearly tripled from the previous quarter (with them downloading more apps in Q4 than all of the previous quarters combined), and that the number of Instant Video customers has more than doubled year-over-year (with the number of streams increasing 300 percent from the previous quarter). Looking at the full year, sales for all of 2011 totaled $48.08 billion, up 41 percent from $34.2 billion in 2010, while net income dropped 45 percent to $631 million (down from $1.15 billion in 2010). And as for the future, Amazon is also lowering expectations somewhat for the first quarter of 2012, projecting that revenue will come in at $12 to $13.4 billion, and that net income could range from a $200 million loss to a gain of $100 million.
ARM boosts profits by 45 percent, strengthens grip on the universe
The British chip designer continued last year's growth streak with a 45 percent surge in quarterly normalized pre-tax profits compared to Q4 2010. Revenues also rose by 21 percent to £137.8 million ($217 million) -- not bad for a company that started out with twelve engineers in a barn. There's nothing complicated about CEO Warren East's explanation of the results -- he simply says that his company sold more designs to "more new customers" and also raked in more royalties from existing deals. Unless the global economies suffers badly in 2012, ARM says it expects to meet market expectations, targeting an annual profit of $860 million this year.
