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ARM alchemy turns ubiquity into gold, profits up 25 percent
A 25 percent rise in profits might look modest compared to the 167 percent explosion announced at the end of Q2 last year, but we doubt anyone at ARM's UK HQ will be moaning. A typically understated earnings report highlighted 1.1 billion ARM-based chips shipped into mobiles and tablets, plus another 800 million chips into other types of devices in Q2. Other tidbits included two new signings for next-gen Cortex-A15 chips, plus two more for Mali graphics chips, which ought to help the mobile chip king maintain its dominance into next year. If you had an extra sausage with your fry-up this morning, ARM, then you deserved it.
Verizon has best quarter since 2008, thanks largely to iPhones and LTE
Hot on the heels of AT&T's happy earnings tidbits yesterday, VZW's latest figures also show that it's raking the money in nice and regular. Total operating revenues in Q2 were $27.5 billion -- that's up half a billion on Q1 2011 and 6.3 percent on Q2 2010 (on a non-GAAP basis). The Big Red claims 2.2 million net additions to its wireless customer base, contributing to a 6.6 percent year-on-year increase in wireless service revenues and a 22.2 percent increase in wireless data revenues. Company execs were especially pleased with the sale of 2.3 million iPhones during the spring, despite the iPhone 5 "being delayed by more than a quarter." Unfortunately they didn't clarify whether the next iPhone was really delayed, or just likely to arrive later than they expected. LTE phones and dongles also proved popular, shifting 1.2 million units and helping to boost Verizon's average revenue per unit. Together, LTE and iPhone devices accounted for 69 percent of new additions. Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg summed it all up as "one of Verizon's best quarters since the 2008 economic downturn." You'll find the full earnings report after the break.
AMD earnings continue to drop despite record CPU sales, GPU business loses $7 million
Poor AMD. While Chipzilla just keeps shattering its own earnings records, the little company that could from Sunnyvale is struggling to chug its way uphill. Its total revenue of $1.57 billion represents a two-percent drop from the last quarter and five percent from the same time last year. Total profits fell from half a billion in Q1 to just $61 million. News was particularly bad at the graphics division which saw revenues plummet 11 percent from Q1. In total, the former ATI brand lost $7 million. It's not all bad news, though -- the company did ship a record number of mobile CPUs, won some awards, and increased its presence on the top 500 super computer list by 15 percent. That's gotta count for something right? [Thanks, Matt]
NCsoft increases profits, maintains revenues
It's a banner year over at the NCsoft household, as the company is showing a strong rise in net profits for the first quarter this year. Even though NCsoft's revenues have held relatively steady during Q1 2011, profits are up by 30% for a total of $37.5 million due to recent promotions in Lineage and Aion. The vast majority of NCsoft's money comes from Korea, with Chinese and Western markets trailing behind. According to Gamesindustry.biz, Aion is making the most bank for the company (accounting for 44% of revenues), followed by Lineage (28%) and Lineage 2 (22%). NCsoft's Sara Rogers sees nothing but good news in these numbers: "NCsoft consistently delivers strong figures in a way that most other games publishers can only dream of. These results prove that we have the MMO brands that people want to play and that we're able to grow and maintain customer loyalty, which is crucial in successful MMO publishing. This year, Gamescom will be very significant for us. We'll have a major presence and maybe even steal a headline or two."
EA iOS revenues up 100%, Firemint mentioned
EA held a conference call yesterday to talk about the past year's revenues, and it's no surprise that the mobile division is doing great. The mobile revenue total was $70 million for the last quarter, up 27 percent from the same period last year. It doesn't sound like things were quite as busy as the holiday season that set records recently, but iOS and its mobile counterparts are definitely a moneymaker for the big traditional gaming company. iOS specifically, says EA, is up "over 100 percent" in revenues from the previous year. And that even compares favorably to the more traditional handheld consoles -- the DS brought in $28 million, and PSP picked up $16 million, both sizable numbers, but lower than the mobile total for sure. The recent Firemint acquisition was also mentioned during the call, but only tangentially. Eric Brown didn't mention the actual purchase price, but he did say that "overall on price, it's less than $25 million." He also called the deal "a great pick up, and we're super excited to have that talented team join EA." EA is definitely building quite the mobile powerhouse.
Nintendo sells 3.61 million 3DS handhelds, but sees 2010 net profit decline by 66 percent
It's a "good news, bad news" kind of a day in Super Mario land, as Nintendo's announcement of a Wii successor has been followed up with the delivery of the company's financial results for fiscal year 2010, which don't make for happy reading. Nintendo's net sales of $12.4 billion for the period ending on March 31st 2011 was 29 percent less than it tallied during the previous year, while its $825 million of net profit was also a staggering 66 percent lower than it earned last year. The 3DS has sold well so far, reaching 3.61 million transactions worldwide, but the Wii is down to 15 million global sales, which marks a 25 percent contraction from its FY2009 total of 20 million. So the impetus for a hardware refresh of the Wii is clearly there, now it's just a matter of waiting for E3 to find out exactly how Nintendo plans to go about it.
AMD collects half a billion in Q1 profit, Fusion APUs now account for half of its laptop shipments
AMD's net income for the past quarter was $510 million, generated from $1.61 billion in total revenues. That should make happy reading for a company that's been raising similar gross revenues previously but finding itself losing cash -- though the more intriguing figures are a little deeper in its latest disclosure. CFO and interim CEO Thomas Seifert has noted that AMD "tripled" its Fusion APU shipments relative to last quarter -- meaning that at least 3.9 million units have made their way out to OEM partners in Q1 -- which now account for "roughly half" of the company's notebook shipments. In less upbeat news, average selling prices in both the microprocessor and graphics divisions were down sequentially, with AMD having to react to pressure from its traditional foes Intel and NVIDIA. You might surmise that with the mainstream Llano APU out and shipping to computer makers, AMD might have a happier second quarter, but the company's guidance is for revenues to be flat or slightly down. A final note of pride is reserved for the Radeon HD 6490M and HD 6750M GPUs, which figured prominently in Apple's latest MacBook Pro refresh and mark a bit of a coup for AMD, who's now responsible for all of Apple's discrete graphics across the MacBook Pro and iMac computing lines. Click the links below for even more intel on Advanced Micro Devices.
Apple maintains lead in mobile app store revenues, but its share is shrinking fast
Growth. You don't have to be Gordon Gekko to recognize that exponential growth in revenues is the mark of both a buoyant industry and, on an individual level, a healthy participant within it. Kudos must, therefore, be handed out to all the top four app stores globally, as each one expended its total revenues by over 130 percent between 2009 and 2010. Interestingly, Apple's growth looks to be slowing down as the App Store begins to reach a saturation point on smartphones, while Nokia's Ovi Store and Google's Android Market blossomed during 2010 by multiples of 7.2 and 8.6 times their 2009 size. Apple's share at the top has shrunken as a consequence, a trend that looks likely to continue when Windows Phone 7's Marketplace and the Ovi Store are melded into one through this year and beyond.
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.
Verizon iPhone has devs, analysts excited by increased audience
As expected, Verizon announced today that it would become the second US company to carry Apple's iPhone on its service, finally offering an alternative to AT&T, which up until now has had an iron grip on the popular device. Game developers are thrilled at the prospect of a whole new audience for a platform so friendly to mobile games, with some analysts and devs predicting mobile gaming revenue could double as soon as the end of this year. Of course, devs are aware that there could be some issues, both with bringing scads of new customers onto the platform as well as transferring some customers from AT&T over to Verizon. But on the whole, they're giddy with optimism -- analysts are saying that as many as 13 million new iPhones could be sold on the Verizon service, and each one of those is a potential new customer for iOS developers.
EA predicts digital sales will make up 20% of revenue for fiscal year
Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown says the company is expecting huge growth in revenue from digital content over the next few years. Speaking to the UBS Media and Communications Conference in New York today, Brown predicted that DLC and full-game downloads will likely account for up to 20 percent of EA's total revenue this fiscal year. Microtransactions have been a big hit, Brown said, especially for the FIFA '10 Ultimate Team mode -- with some players allegedly spending up to $700 just on card packs for the game. Looking ahead to next year, Brown said EA's "single biggest discreet digital add [ ... ] is expected to come from the Star Wars MMO, " The Old Republic. Brown admitted that most of these digital sales usually start with the sale of a physical disc, especially on the current generation of consoles. So while digital revenues are set to grow, EA is unlikely to abandon traditional game sales completely for ... a really long time.
AT&T clocks up 2.6 million net new wireless subscribers, bigger profits in Q3
AT&T's balance sheet just keeps looking happier and happier every quarter. In spite of the company's somewhat questionable hardware choices -- such as picking the ugly option from both Samsung's and LG's Windows Phone 7 platters -- it now proudly boasts a total of 92.8 million active wireless service lines. This comes off the back of a 2.6 million net subscriber gain over the third quarter of 2010, a record for this period of the year. Churn, or the rate at which people left AT&T, was also at its best ever for the quarter, coming in at a lowly 1.32 percent, while postpaid integrated device (read: smartphone on a contract) activations reached above the eight million mark. Total net profit was $12.3 billion, thanks to the sale of Sterling Commerce and a one-off tax adjustment, but in cashflow terms the company made $4.0b in the quarter. That's a lot of dinero, no doubt aided by Q3 being the first full reporting period after the iPhone 4's launch, we just wish some of AT&T's other phones weren't quite so unappealing.
Android developer anecdotally claims AdMob brings home the bacon
In February 2009, Arron La's $0.99 Advanced Task Manager was one of the first paid apps on Android, allowing T-Mobile G1 users to do what was then a novel thing -- close applications. (We immediately bought a copy.) Today, the app is all but obsolete, its functionality baked right into Android's core, but Arron's still making thousands of dollars a month. Why do we bring this up? Because nine months after Arron released the pay-first version, he unleashed an ad-supported variant as well... and since that day, each has contributed about the same amount ($30,000) of money. It's not exactly an object lesson in what's possible on the 70,000-application-strong Android Market, as this gentleman obviously had quite the head start, but it does show that when it comes time to monetize your best-thing-since-sliced-bread app, there's more than one option -- ads can be an equally good revenue source. Find rays of hope for indie development (and several stormy clouds for comparison) at the links below. Update: Did we say 50,000 apps? We meant more like 70K and counting as of July. Thanks to the astute commenters who pointed this out. [Thanks, Shannon G.]
WWDC 2010: More iAds details emerge
Steve Jobs said Apple created iAds to help developers make more money. The problem before iAds, to hear Apple tell the tale, had been that mobile ads on the iPhone were a bit of a kludge: different systems supported only basic interaction, they dumped you to Safari most of the time, and as each ad network does things differently, a developer wanting to make ad-supported apps had to do the math every time they signed up. With iAds, developers get 60% of the revenue generated by the ad in their app. They can pretty easily drop them into their apps because the system is built into iOS 4. But will anyone use them? Advertisers are convinced they will. Quoting Steve via this morning's liveblogs, "So let me tell you some of the brands that will be advertising with us. Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney... those are some of the brands." Those are no small potatoes. At the keynote Steve demonstrated an iAd for the upcoming Nissan Leaf electric car. It's a compelling ad, to be sure, with an interactive signup feature and even a chance to win a car just through the ad. Steve went so far as to project that Apple would have 48% of the mobile advertising market locked up by the end of this year. That's the $60 million in commitments they've got so far and then some! Granted, this is all new movement, and the ad industry has been desperate for a new play lately, with most "standard" ads on the web being annoying or easy to gloss over. Ad execs are clucking their tongues over the richness of the iAds platform (while seemingly missing the fact that they could have always built engaging experiences on the web this way without resorting to Flash). On the developer side... Well, I'll do a little informal polling whilst here in San Francisco. But I think Apple will make this so easy to do that it'll be an easy decision for developers ready to serve advertising. My only concern: will these ads be sucking up the precious bandwidth on AT&T's network, causing me overages on data? I guess we'll find out when the system launches July 1 along with iOS 4. photo courtesy Engadget
Sega expects profits in fiscal Q4 2010 forecast
Sega recently posted quite the surprise for its investors: a revised earnings forecast. In an interesting turn of events, Sega has foregone the doom and gloom of having to admit it will likely earn less money during its Q4 2010 forecast -- the period between December 2009 and March 2010 -- for something a bit more on the cheery side: profits! First, Sega estimates net sales of ¥380 billion ($4.08 billion), a 9.5 percent decline from its previous estimate of ¥420 billion ($4.51 billion) -- wait, we thought we had good news in here? Aha! Here it is: net income. Sega previously forecast net income of ¥15 billion ($161 million), but has now adjusted that to ¥18 billion ($193 million). This spontaneous spike in cash money is attributed to "improved profit margins in the pachislot and pachinko machine business and amusement machine business." We imagine sales of Bayonetta and Aliens vs Predator also helped. And in case you're wondering what the difference between net sales and net income is: Net sales accounts for the total profits a company makes based on the products it sells, while net income takes into account net sales and other operating costs, such as licensing fees and taxes. [Via GameSpot]
Palm sales 'lower than expected,' revenues to miss targets
Ruh-roh. Palm just confirmed what we heard from analysts yesterday: sales aren't going so well. The company's updated its third quarter financial guidance to say that consumer adoption of its products is "taking longer than expected," leading to lowered order volumes from carriers and deferral of some orders to "future periods." That certainly puts that "Chinese New Year" Pre / Pixi work stoppage in a slightly different context, doesn't it? Looking at the new numbers, Palm says it expects non-GAAP Q3 revenue to be about $300m, or about the same it pulled in Q2 before the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus launched on Verizon. That's not a good sign, but we'll see if that kicks someone at Verizon or Palm into realizing they might need a new, less-stupid ad campaign focused on capabilities, not stereotypes.
Analyst: China's online game revenues to reach $11 billion by 2012
According to a report recently published by typographically-challenged research firm Analysys, revenues from China's online gaming industry will reach 73.1 billion yuan ($10.7 billion) within three years. If you're one of those people who have a hard time telling whether numbers are large, let us assure you that this one is very large indeed. As a point of reference, the entire U.S. gaming industry pulled in $11.7 billion in revenues last year. The report expects online gaming revenues for the nation to reach $3.8 billion this year -- however, it also estimates MMO market penetration to only be at 27 percent, a number it expects will increase as internet access becomes more readily available to Chinese citizens. Of course, all the internet access in the world won't bolster online gaming revenues if all the good ones keep getting shut down for no reason whatsoever.
Nexon America's financials continue to impress in Q3
We reported back in August that Nexon America had begun the third Quarter of 2009 with a very solid July; their revenue for the month grew 35% over the numbers for July 2008. Now that Q3 is over, they are happily touting some additional (and still impressive) figures. August 2009 beat out last year's August revenues by 32%, and September hit a lofty 44% growth in revenues compared to the same time in 2008. Overall, Nexon America's third quarter revenue grew 36% compared to Q3 2008.Nexon America's CEO David Kim pointed out that this success comes without the bump that releasing a new game often brings: "Increasing our revenues without having added any new games to the company's portfolio for more than a year tells me that we are on the right track. Dungeon Fighter Online is just ramping up, so no revenues generated by that game are reflected in the outstanding third quarter we've had.Dungeon Fighter Online is still in open beta, but an item mall has just been launched for the game. We can only imagine that Nexon's growth will continue when these revenues begin to show up on future financial reports.
AT&T loving the iPhone
AT&T has released fourth quarter and 2008 results and it's not all roses for the telecommunications giant. Wireline telephone subscribers were down significantly, and AT&T has spent a bundle (US $453 million) upgrading the 3G network to serve the iPhone and their other Smartphone offerings. The bright spot for AT&T is the iPhone itself, which contributed to very positive gains in subscribers and revenue. Even with the boost from our favorite phone, AT&T profits fell to 64 cents a share in the fourth quarter compared to 71 cents one year ago.Here are the interesting iPhone stats: AT&T activated 4.3 million iPhone 3Gs since it came on the market including 1.9 million in the fourth quarter alone. Those activations are more than double the number from a year before with the 2G iPhone iPhone owners provide about 60% higher revenue than other AT&T customers About 40% of fourth quarter activations of iPhones were customers that were new to AT&T. Most came from other carriers like Sprint, Verizon, etc. Customers who drop AT&T aren't usually those with iPhones (although many iPhone users would like to because of bad coverage or service). For just about anyone selling anything, the fourth quarter of last year was dreadful. The iPhone was not exempt from this trend. Activations were down 21% comparing the fourth quarter to the third quarter of 2008, but the iPhone still clobbered the Blackberry Storm.
NCsoft third quarter profits sliced in half
MMO industry giant NCsoft has seen better weeks than this. First there was Richard Garriott's announcement that he's leaving the company for new horizons. Then came the news that NCsoft's third quarter profits fell by 50 percent. Gamasutra reported today: "In the three months ending September 30th, the South Korean company's profit was down from 10 billion won ($7.2m) in 2007 to just 5 billion ($3.6m) in this year's third quarter." Gamasutra goes on to cite some additional figures in regards to NCsoft's operations, namely that its Korean titles are still the big earners, with Lineage and Lineage II comprising roughly 84 percent of its overall revenues. MMO titles popular in North America and EU account for roughly 15 percent of NCsoft's revenues. For further details, be sure to check out Gamasutra's piece on NCsoft's third quarter revenues for more statistics linked to the company's revenue dip.
