Hasta La Gadget!

It looks like T-Mobile was onto something with its UnCarrier remake, as the US wireless outfit picked up 1.1 million customers in Q2 2013 and saw a major boost in revenue. It also managed to keep postpaid churn (turnover of customers on contract) to its lowest level ever at 1.58 percent. The carrier said the numbers were helped by its Jump upgrade program and Simple Choice family plans, launched just last month. Despite a recent price bump in the iPhone, T-Mob said the model accounted for 29 percent of its handset sales, but added that other models, like Samsung’s Galaxy S 4, also moved well. In all, it sold 4.3 million total smartphones, making up 86 percent of total phone sales — up from 71 percent over last quarter.

Meanwhile, its 4G LTE network has rolled out to 116 metro areas so far, a more rapid pace than it promised, and now covers 157 million people. That was helped along with the rapid transition of freshly acquired MetroPCS, which T-Mobile said would expand to 15 new markets. It’ll get a further boost from its US Cellular spectrum acquisition, expected to be completed soon. The result of all that was a 20 percent boost in revenue to $6.3 billion over $4.4 billion last year, albeit with a year-over-year drop in net income from $207 million to a loss of $16 million. Still if T-Mobile keeps up its highly energetic marketing and new program additions, it should get back in the black soon.

Filed under: Wireless, Mobile, T-Mobile

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Source: T-Mobile

HTC’s unaudited results for Q2 2013 showed a sign of hope, but in today’s call for the Q3 guidance, the Taiwanese company expects next quarter’s revenue to be in the range of $1.67 billion to $2 billion, with an operating profit of anything from $0 down to… well, a margin of -minus 8 percent, which would equate to a horrible loss. This is also a notable drop from last year’s $2.4 billion revenue and $168 million operating profit.

CEO Peter Chou blames this decline on the higher cost structure (bill of materials and operating costs) and the clearance of aged inventory in the channel, but he hopes that Q3 will be the bottom in terms of HTC’s profitability. CFO Chialin Chang added that his team has a few actions in place to help restore the company to profitability very soon.

Filed under: Misc, Mobile, HTC

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Facebook saw its revenue grow year-over-year in its Q1 earnings reported in May, and that trend has continued for its second quarter. The company has just announced that it’s pulled in $1.81 billion in revenue for Q2, beating analysts’ expectations, while net income stood at $333 million. Of course, much of that money comes from ads: Facebook says that revenue from advertising now represents 88 percent of its total revenue, and that mobile advertising accounted for about 41 percent of its total advertising revenue for the quarter. Mark Zuckerberg highlighted that last bit in a statement, saying that “the work we’ve done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future.”

In other numbers, Facebook also reported that it has 1.15 billion monthly active users as of June 30th, while its daily active users stood at 669 million. Mobile users were again its biggest growth area, with 819 million users actively checking in on their mobile devices each month (up 51 percent compared to the same quarter in 2012), and 469 million active on a daily basis. We’ll keep you posted on any additional developments that may come out of the company’s earnings call in the next hour.

Update: Zuckerberg and co. didn’t have much additional news to offer during the earning’s call, although he did comment briefly on Facebook Home, which he described as a “seed we’re planting,” and something to look at over the long term.

Filed under: Facebook

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Source: Facebook

AT&T’s 2013 second quarter results are in, with the telco reporting $3.8 billion in net profits, a slight decrease from the $3.9 billion earned the same quarter last year. Total revenues for Q2 came in at $32.1 billion, representing a 1.6-percent increase year-over-year. AT&T’s attributing much of this gain to a 2 million-plus increase in subscribers — both on the wireless and wired broadband end — and an uptick in mobile data plans. Wireless revenue for the quarter, which includes mobile phone and tablet sales, came in at $17.3 billion and accounts for a 5.7-percent boost versus Q2 2012, while revenue for wireless service totaled $15.4 billion. On the data front, the carrier saw significant growth as its revenue jumped nearly 20 percent compared to the same period last year, settling in at $5.4 billion.

Of its new subscriber load, 1.2 million can be attributed to AT&T’s wireless business, while its U-Verse broadband and TV service gains — which now totals 9.4 million subs overall — account for the remainder of that figure. According to AT&T’s estimates, almost three-quarters (73 percent) of its 49.5 million postpaid wireless subscribers are smartphone users, of which nearly 35 percent have active LTE plans. Coverage for that high-speed data service currently reaches over 225 million households, with the carrier targeting a total of 270 million covered by year-end. AT&T anticipates that LTE rollout will be almost entirely complete by summer 2014.

Update: In the investor call, AT&T executives hammered home the commitment to high-speed data and the willingness of its customers to opt for larger data buckets, especially when it comes to its Mobile Share plans. About 13 million subscribers are on a Mobile Share plan, and more than 25 percent of those are opting for 10GB or more per month. Interestingly, more than 15 percent of customers on Mobile Share moved over from grandfathered unlimited plans — over 70 percent of postpaid customers are on some kind of tiered data plan.

AT&T also said on the call that it sold more iPhones this quarter compared to Q2 2012, though it would not provide specific numbers. Further, CEO Ralph de la Vega said that T-Mobile’s recent offering of the iPhone had a significantly less impact on churn than when the iPhone went to Sprint and Verizon. Not to leave others out, he said that this quarter saw its best-ever Android sales and that it hopes the Lumia 1020 will drive sales of the company’s Windows Phone devices as well.

As for the carrier’s recent purchase of Leap, de la Vega said that the acquisition will accelerate AT&T’s entry into the prepaid segment. Combined with the official launch of LTE in AT&T’s goPhone lineup, he hopes that Leap will give the carrier a better position in the prepaid market than before.

Nicole Lee contributed to this report.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, HD, Mobile, AT&T

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Source: AT&T

The closing bell has rung, and Yahoo has released its earnings for the second quarter of 2013. What’s the final verdict? Compared year-to-year over the same quarter last year, it’s mostly good news for the company: GAAP income is at $137 million (up 150 percent), while GAAP revenue comes in at $1.13 billion (down seven percent). GAAP net earnings came in at $331 million, which is a 46 percent increase from this time last year, while non-GAAP came out at $386 million, a six percent jump. Not bad, given the number of acquisitions the company made this quarter — nine, to be precise, including Tumblr.

In terms of other highlights from the earnings report, search revenue fell by nine percent year-over-year, while display revenue went down 12 percent. Net earnings per share jumped up 68 percent to $0.30. Full press release is below the break for your perusal.

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