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Windows 10 didn't stop PC sales from dropping this summer
Windows 10 may have breathed new life into your PC, but it didn't do anything to juice PC sales this summer. Both Gartner and IDC estimate that computer sales dropped several points year-over-year (between 7.7 and 10.8 percent) in the third quarter, right when the new Windows arrived. That's one of the steeper drops in recent memory, in fact. Not that it comes as a complete surprise. As the analyst firms explain, Microsoft's fast-tracked release left many PC makers shipping existing systems with Windows 10, which weren't going to drive demand as much as brand new models. You're not going to buy a months-old laptop just because it's running new software, are you? The big question is whether or not the wave of new Windows 10 PCs launching this fall will make a difference -- if there's still a sharp decline, the industry is really in trouble.
iPhone 6s breaks Apple sales record with 13 million sold
Apple's iPhone 6s is the company's new sales champ, with 13 million units sold just three days after launch. "Sales... (blew) past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple's history," said CEO Tim Cook in a statement. The new handset easily beat the iPhone 6, which was in 10 million consumer's hands by the same three-day period a year ago. So how did Apple manage to sell around $10 billion worth of phones in such a short time-frame? Good press on the devices didn't hurt, but for the first time, the iPhone 6s launched in China at the same time that it debuted in the US and Europe.
Apple Watch will be available at Sprint on September 25th
Now that Cupertino's wearable has been on sale for a while, it's making its way outside the confines of the company's retail locations and online store. In addition hitting shelves at Currys and PC World in the UK, the Apple Watch will go on sale at Sprint this week in the States. T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted that his company would also begin selling the wearable device too, but the carrier has yet to announce any official availability info. However, MacRumors reports that Big Magenta will sell the gadget on the same day. In the US, the Sprint and T-Mobile will join Best Buy as places other than Apple's own shopping spots that you can pick up the smartwatch. Internationally, there's a sizable list of places to nab the Apple Watch as well, including department stores like France's Galeries Lafayette.
Apple becomes the second-biggest wearables maker, behind Fitbit
The big question surrounding the Apple Watch is how well it's selling, but Apple isn't saying just yet. Without concrete numbers, we're forced to turn to various projections -- and one of the more reliable sources says that Apple's first wearable is doing well. According to IDC, Apple shipped 3.6 million Apple Watches during the second quarter of 2015; that's good for second place in the global wearables market, behind market leader Fitbit.
Even the world's no.1 PC maker finds selling smartphones tough
Lenovo is the biggest PC maker in the world, but smartphones remain a challenge. The company's mobile arm announced a pre-tax loss of $292 million for the three months ending in June: Motorola phones shipped stood at 5.9 million, down just less than a third from last year. The company now plans to cut 10 percent of its non-manufacturing jobs (roughly 3,200 people), aiming to save around $650 million in the second half of 2015. It's also writing down $300 million in unsold phones. The company's total net profit dropped 51 percent year-on-year, down to $105 million.
Sprint's traveling installers come to Boston, Philly and Atlanta
One of the ways that Sprint is hoping to revive its fortunes is with Direct 2 You, a service where door-to-door salespeople set up your phone from inside your home. The offering has added a fair few locations since its launch in April, and now the company is rolling it out to Atlanta, Boston, Houston and Philadelphia. That increases the range of the program by nearly five million more customers, with several more locations coming by the end of this year. It can't come soon enough, since Sprint is currently reeling from losing its coveted third-place spot to upstart rival T-Mobile -- a fact that hasn't gone unremarked on by the CEOs of either company.
Is HTC Android's first falling giant?
HTC has announced "significant cuts" and slashed jobs after posting a $265 million net loss, with more losses promised for the future. Reuters is reporting that the poor performance has been blamed on the company's One series of flagships that, while accomplished, are losing out to "more fashionable phones" in the market. TechCrunch is saying that HTC is hoping to reverse this trend by turning its attentions to the middle-tier of the market, devices that cost between $300 and $500, parking its tanks squarely on the lawns of Chinese rivals Huawei and Xiaomi.
Huawei passes Microsoft as third-largest mobile phone maker
When Microsoft bought Nokia, it inherited a pretty large feature phone business. But that business has shrunk a lot since the purchase, according to Strategy Analytics, and Microsoft hasn't set the smartphone world on fire either. As a result, Huawei just displaced it as the world's third largest mobile phone vendor by shipping 30.6 million phones, nearly 50 percent more than last year. It now holds a 7 percent market share behind Apple (10 percent) and Samsung (20.5 percent). Microsoft sits in fourth place after selling 27.8 million phones, nearly half the 50.3 million devices it sold last year over the same period.
LG made 1.2 cents in profit for every phone it sold last quarter
LG's latest earnings report shows just how tough the smartphone market is getting. On the one hand, LG Mobile shipped 8.1 million LTE smartphones, its best result ever. On the other hand, it sold fewer premium models in Korea and spent a lot of money marketing its flagship G4 in the US against models by Apple, Samsung, et al. (The company singled out Apple, saying that iPhone sales hurt its earnings this quarter.) The net result was a mobile operating profit of just 200 million won ($172,000) or 1.2 cents per phone. The good news is that the LG G4 has only been on sale in the US for two months, so it may have a stronger impact on LG's bottom line next quarter.
Music streaming has officially exploded in the UK
Music streaming has never been more popular in the UK. The latest figures from the Official Charts Company show that 11.5 billion tracks were streamed in the first six months of 2015. That's almost double the 6.4 billion recorded for the same period last year, and close to the 14.8 billion tracks logged for the entirety of 2014. Likewise, streaming on video platforms such as YouTube are skyrocketing. The Official Charts Company reported 14.3 billion streams last year, and already listeners have clocked 12.5 billion streams in 2015.
Xiaomi sales hit record high but miss ambitious target
Xiaomi has announced that it sold 34.7 million smartphones in the first half of 2015. Since it's already July, though, it's safe to say that the company will have to think of something exceptional to reach its target number for the year: CEO Lei Jun proclaimed long ago that he and his team aim to sell 100 million phones. Still, 34.7 million is quite impressive, seeing as it represents phones sold to customers and not devices "shipped" to retailers -- not to mention, there's been a shipment decline in China recently. It's also still 33 percent more than what the company sold within the same period last year.
Xbox One pulls off an unlikely sales victory over the PS4
Well, this is kind of surprising: the Xbox One lead console sales last month. I say it's surprising because there wasn't an exclusive game that launched for the system, nor was there a new bundle deal going at the time, either. Regardless, it's good news and something that Redmond hasn't seen in an awfully long time. The company says that domestic sales of the console increased some 63 percent compared to last April while active Xbox Live users on a global scale grew by 24 percent in the same window. Of course, we still don't have hard numbers in terms of sales about the Xbox One, and until the console breaks 20 million sold you can bet that we almost assuredly won't.
Xbox revenue dips 24 percent thanks to Xbox One price cut
In the three months leading up to March 31, 2015, Microsoft reported a 24 percent drop in revenue from its Xbox division compared with last year, attributing much of the decline to sales of an "increased mix of lower price Xbox One" consoles. Microsoft cut the price of the Xbox One from $500 to $400 (and it ditched the Kinect) in June 2014, and it's knocked off another $50 since. The corporate Xbox arm includes both the Xbox One and Xbox 360, and Microsoft did not separate sales of each console in its Q3 2015 financial report. Hardware revenue overall was down just 4 percent, boosted by Surface tablet sales, which were up 44 percent over last year to $713 million.
Tesla's best sales come in time for its first quarterly report
Tesla Motors doesn't release monthly car sales data like most other automakers, but today it released its first quarterly sales report showing 10,030 cars delivered (to end customers worldwide) in Q1. The EV builder says it will keep the information coming in the future, three days after the end of every quarter. This time around, that sales figure represents a new company record for a quarter, and a 55 percent jump from the same period last year -- even if it overestimated Tesla demand in China. The only real problem with the stats? It doesn't break out how many shockingly fast -- and soon self-driving -- AWD P85Ds that included, and I don't see any one of those 10k in my driveway right now.
BMW can't build its $135,000 plug-in hybrid fast enough
Gas may be cheap right now, but even the well-to-do prefer not to burn it. BMW is doubling the production pace of its 357 horsepower i8 plug-in hybrid car -- which runs 23 miles or so on electricity alone -- to around 20 vehicles per day. The automaker is bumping the numbers to meet demand and cut the four-month waiting list in half. As our sister site Autoblog pointed out, that's a mere .04 percent of an F-150's production, but then again the i8 costs around four times as much.
Musk claims Tesla was 'misled' about demand for cars in China
Earlier this month, we reported about Tesla cutting jobs in China after sales failed to meet expectations. Now, we're learning that there might be more to it than just over optimistic forecasting. According to Business Insider, Tesla founder, Elon Musk, claimed the company had been "misled" by Chinese speculators into believing that demand for the electric cars was higher than it really was. Musk added that China is the only place Tesla operates that currently has excess vehicles, with an estimated 1,600 cars shipped to China, but many remaining unlicensed after resellers u-turned on orders.
Sony sold over 20 million PlayStation 4s
People really like the PlayStation 4. How many, though? Over 20 million. As of March 1st, Sony says that it's sold through (not shipped, sold) 20.2 million of its latest console. It's going to be hard to judge just how far Sony's ahead of chief rival Microsoft and the Xbox One, however, until the latter releases numbers of it own. And, with a dearth of killer exclusive games, it's going to be interesting to see how long Sony can maintain this lead.
Nintendo shipped 5.7 million Amiibo figures (a lot of them were Link)
Nintendo said its now shipped over 5.7 million of its NFC-connected Amiibo figures, and more interestingly, it's showed which ones do the best around the world. There's indeed some variation, but Link, bless him, is the best-selling Amiibo globally, claiming first place across Japan, the US and Europe. Mario, however, prevents the the Zelda protagonist from getting a grand slam, claiming top spot in Australia. (Mario gets second place in the US, followed by Pikachu.) During the investor-only meeting, Nintendo added that it plans to use Amiibo to unlock vignettes of older games, as well as launch NFC-compatible cards to complement its figure series. We've translated the US' Top Ten right after the break. People like Donkey Kong! Who knew! (Thanks, Kyle.)
Facebook's group-based selling is now a quick post away
Facebook is clearly extra-serious about its efforts to beat internet sale sites at their own game through groups. As part of an update rolling out over the months ahead, the social network's For Sale Groups will let you tap a simple Sell button to hawk your wares -- from there, you'll just have to write a description and set basic details like the pick-up location and price. You'll also have an easy way to mark items as sold, or to sift through your history if you don't remember whether or not you sold that table lamp. Are these enough to make you ditch Craigslist? Not necessarily, but you'll at least have more reasons to stick with Facebook's For Sale Groups if you're an early user.
Motorola smartphone sales double in a year as Lenovo takes over
Despite a supposedly weak PC market, Lenovo does very well, thank you. It's trying to sprinkle the same golden dust on to its latest acquisition, Motorola, and appears to be succeeding. Sales for the iconic brand are up 118 percent over last year to $1.9 billion (with more than 10 million units shipped). Part of that surge happened prior to the official purchase, but nonetheless helped bump Lenovo's united mobile division 78 percent in a year -- third overall behind Samsung and Apple. Motorola also lost less money than forecast, with Lenovo suggesting it could become profitable in as little as a year, despite the fact that it has yet to go on sale in China. Lenovo confirmed in its latest financial report, however, that Moto is "soon to re-enter" its home market where Apple, for one, has fared pretty well of late.
