It is no secret that Blackberry has fallen from its once high-and-mighty position, suffering financially in the midst of that and making a rather gallant effort to turn itself around. Although the company poured a lot of effort into BlackBerry 10 and the related handsets, it is still faltering, and as a result is open […]
Depending on whom you are speaking to, Bitcoin is either one of the most promising money-related ventures in modern times, it’s a fad prone to fizzle away, or it is a threat to all. Regardless of which side you fall on, one thing is now certain: bitcoins are a currency, and they’re subject to regulation […]
Square is the nifty little mobile payment device that can be attached to a smartphone or a tablet and used to accept payments from a credit or debit card. The service is offered alongside two apps – Android and iOS varieties – both of which have been updated with, among other things, the ability to […]
Nintendo has just revealed its consolidated results for the April-June quarter, and they show a significant 3.8 percent decline in sales compared to the same quarter last year — despite (or perhaps because of) the release of the semi-next-gen Wii U. This console sold just 160,000 units during the quarter, or less than half the number of units shifted between January and March. The company’s original sales projections for the device, and its hope of selling nine million units by March 2014, are now a distant dream — we’re looking at a lifetime total of just 3.61 million sales. On a more positive note, however, it still managed to sell a million Wii U games, and 1.4 million 3DS handhelds. In addition, the year-over-year fall in revenue was much smaller than the one Nintendo suffered in Q2 2012, and its operating loss was much smaller too — just under five billion yen in the red. Factoring in all the company’s various sources of income, it managed to eke out a net profit of 8.6 billion yen, or $88 million, so there’s some life in this playful old outfit yet.
Source: Nintendo (PDF download)
It goes without saying that HTC has been focusing on the top-tier phone market recently, with the release of the HTC One and HTC One mini, as well as the DROID DNA late last year. However, the company is wanting to focus more on releasing mid-tier devices, as the market in several countries has grown in that respect.
During the company’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Peter Chou said that HTC’s upcoming plans will “address some of our challenges of mid-tier product competitiveness.” Chou says that the company has suffered recently due to intense competition with flagship devices, but he thinks that focusing more on mid-tier products will get the company back on track.
Essentially, HTC is looking to diversify its lineup of products, and we’ve already seen evidence of that recently, with the unveiling of the Desire 500, which is the company’s newest low-tier smartphone that includes a 4.3-inch 800×480 display, with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor clocked at 1.2GHz and 1GB of RAM on the inside.
Aside from focusing on more mid-tier devices in the future, the company also wants to focus on more partnerships, and Chou notes that he hopes this will help HTC make a big statement in the mobile market once 2014 rolls around. Chou is also hoping to finish out the year on a high note, following what the company is predicting to be a poor third quarter.
HTC is expecting Q3 revenue in the range of $1.7 billion to $2 billion, which would be down from the previous quarter’s revenue of $2.35 billion. This would as much as a 30% drop in revenue. However, the company says that Q4 will be much better, but didn’t mention financial outlooks that far ahead yet.
VIA: The Next Web
SOURCE: HTC
HTC mid-tier devices planned with poor third quarter expected is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Last month, we reported that – as part of an ongoing battle between Pandora and the music industry – the Internet radio company would acquire terrestrial radio station KXMZ in order to get an RMLC license. The ultimate goal in the business move would be scoring the lower royalty rates that its competitors enjoy. The ASCAP has long bucked against Pandora’s efforts, and this acquisition is no different: a request has been made for the FCC to block the purchase.
Says ASCAP in the filing: “Pandora is buying KXMZ for one reason – to argue that it is entitled to pay lower music performance royalties to composers, songwriters and lyricists for its billions of online-only internet music streams … Moreover, Pandora’s acquisition of KXMZ would not serve the public interest … The application should be denied.”
According to various statements made by Pandora, the purpose of purchasing a terrestrial radio station is to get the same lower rates that ASCAP provides for competitors, such as iHeartRadio, due to their ownership of terrestrial stations, which have different rates than Internet stations. As we stated last month, Pandora considers this a violation of the Department of Justice decree it is supposed to follow.
Later in June, Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren posted a lengthy statement on the company’s blog regarding the issue, including what he considers to be lies created by the music industry’s “hired guns.” Statements such as Pandora’s desire to decrease royalties by 85-percent, said Westergren, were complete lies created for the purpose of causing the company problems.
Following this, Westergren went on to discuss the issue between spins and plays, whereas a play on a radio station is listened to by many, while a spin is a song listened to by one user. As such, says Westergren, it could take many spins to equal a single play, and such is the nature of contention between what Internet radio stations should have to pay in royalties.
The Petition to Deny was filed by ASCAP on July 25.
SOURCE: TechDirt
Pandora acquisition of radio station KXMZ challenged with FCC block request is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The retail game is all about scraping a living out of tiny margins, and nowhere is that more evident than in Amazon‘s latest financial report. The company managed to grow revenue by 22 percent year-over-year between April and June, to $15.7 billion, and yet it confounded analysts’ predictions by making a loss of $7 million, versus a $7 million profit in the same quarter last year. Then again, this knock has been attributed to the fact that Amazon is pushing to expand beyond the retail game, by investing heavily in its Kindle business, digital downloads and streaming products, as well as in building a bigger presence in China. This has been the strategy for a while, of course, and it’s not the first time the company has been pushed into the red as a result. But Jeff Bezos says that Amazon’s top ten bestselling products last quarter were all either Kindles, accessories for Kindles, or digital content for Kindles, which suggests the transformation is steadily having an impact, even if it’s proving expensive.
Filed under: Misc, Tablets, Internet, Amazon
Source: BBC News
Samsung has released its second quarter earnings report for 2013, showing an overall increase in sales, but with one hiccup in tow: a 3-percent drop over the previous quarter in its operating profit for its IT and Mobile Communications division. The sales numbers come in at 57.46 trillion won, which works out to about $51 billion USD.
The sales represent a 9-percent increase over the first quarter of this year, which came in at 52.87 trillion won, both of which trumped 2012′s Q2 sales of 47.60 won. The operating profit, meanwhile, was 9.53 trillion won for this quarter, which works out to about $8.5 billion USD. This was also a 9-percent jump over Q1, which came in at 8.78 trillion.
The sales numbers are up across the board, with the slightest gain coming in the Semiconductor business at 1-percent from 8.68 trillion won over 8.58. The largest gain came in the Display Panel business, which saw a quarter-on-quarter increase of 15-percent from 7.11 trillion won to 8.18 trillion. While the numbers went up for the year, both are still down compared to 2012 Q2′s 8.25 trillion.
As far as Mobile business sales go, the sales increased 9-percent from 34.58 trillion over last quarter’s 31.77, both being a large increase over 2012′s 22.43 trillion. Operating profit shows a 3-percent drop for the IT & Mobile Communications division, however, at 6.28 under last year’s 6.51, both of which still out pace 2012′s 4.13 trillion won.
As we pointed out when the first round of numbers were made available earlier this month, the results fell short of what analysts had anticipated, and because of this Samsung took a small hit on its shares. While the mobile business did see a dip, the overall picture is far from grim, with both sales and operating profits increasing over the last quarter is all the other areas.
SOURCE: Samsung
Samsung 2013 Q2 earnings show 9% growth while mobile division profits drop is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
There are your everyday run-of-the-mill hackers, and then there are the hackers who set the bar for everyone else. Though we’d hardly call them exemplary individuals, the five culprits recently indicted for the largest known financial hack in US history would certainly belong in the latter category. Comprised of four Russians and a Ukrainian, the quintet’s unsavory accomplishments include breaking into networks belonging to major corporations like Nasdaq, Dow Jones, 7-Eleven and JCPenney — siphoning more than 160 million credit card numbers and bringing about millions of dollars in losses. They did so with SQL injection attacks to install malware that let them crack passwords and snag other sensitive data. Two of them — Vladimir Drinkman and Dmitriy Smilianets — have been arrested, while the rest — Alexandr Kalinin, Roman Kotov and Mikhail Rytikov — remain at large. All five could be behind bars for decades if found guilty. For the nitty gritty as to just how and which companies were affected, hit up the source link below. It’s enough to make you want to change your password several times over.
Filed under: Internet
Via: Ars Technica
Source: US Department of Justice
We’ve heard a lot of numbers from Apple today, including record iPhone sales for the third quarter, as well as iPad and Mac sales that were slightly down, but still better than expected by the company. However, what didn’t get mentioned at all in the press release or the earnings call was how well the iPod is doing.
In the simplest of terms, the iPod isn’t doing well at all. In fact, revenue for the iPod business dropped a staggering 31% year-over-year, and the number of units sold dropped 32%. This is the biggest hit that the iPod has ever taken in an earnings report within the last few years. The second-biggest hit that the iPod took was Q4 2011 when iPod sales were down 27% from the previous year.
Of course, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as we’ve known for awhile that the iPod has been on a slow downward trend, even with the iPod touch still getting a lot of love from Apple as the phone-less iPhone device for those who want a portable multimedia player without the communication radios.
Apple didn’t provide specifics as far as sales figures for each individual iPod device, but we’re guessing the iPod touch is up there as the best-selling iPod, while the Nano and Shuffle might be up there as well, but the iPod Classic is seeing its dying day, considering that Apple hasn’t touched it in a couple years, and hasn’t bothered updating it in a while.
This all goes to show that Apple is cannibalizing their own products, but that’s not a bad thing at all. It’s merely the circle of life and the progression of technology. iPods and music players were all the craze in the early 2000s, but it’s the smartphone that’s taking over now, and Apple is more than happy to follow along that route.
iPod sales down 31% from last year, gets no mention from Apple is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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