Hasta La Gadget!

By now, you’re probably aware that MetroPCS shareholders voted in favor of a merger with T-Mobile, and with regulatory red tape out of the way, both companies are now set to become one on April 30th. Now, MetroPCS has laid its Q1 2013 financials bare, which provides us with an excellent peek at T-Mobile’s future partner. First off, the company is making money, and its operational income is actually rising, but it’s also dealing with increased costs from loans, taxes and the like. Overall, MetroPCS reported a net income of $19.4 million for the first quarter, which is down from $21 million just one year ago.

Speaking of loans, MetroPCS has a ton of them. Its liabilities now sit at $10.3 billion, and its managed to take on $3.4 billion in financing during the last year alone. From a balance sheet perspective, 75 percent of the company’s assets exist as debt, and this is a burden that T-Mobile must now take on. Naturally, much of this merger was in effort to score additional spectrum, but Ms. Magenta also stands to gain 9 million new customers once the deal completes, 39 percent of which are LTE subscribers. Better yet, with a churn rate of 2.9 percent, they’re sticking around now more than any previous time in company history.

Filed under: Wireless, Mobile, T-Mobile

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Source: PR Newswire

While there’s no shortage of 3DS iterations headed to the market, Nintendo is having a harder time selling its new Wii U. Profits for the year are also half of its own predictions, despite the fact that Nintendo reduced its rosy estimates in the interim. Net sales are down 1.9 percent over the last year, down to 635 billion yen, but most importantly the company has managed to turn its net income into positive figures, netting 7 billion yen over the last year, compared to a 40 billion yen loss the year before. Following its launch, Wii U sales have slowed substantially, with only 390,000 units sold since December (now totaling 3.45 million), while the 3DS continues to sell in healthier numbers, with Nintendo shifting 1.25 million handhelds in the same period.

Focusing on the next year, the company maintains that it’ll increase net income to 10 billion yen in the next twelve months, with a focus on selling “the compelling nature” of its gaming hardware, as well as pushing its 3DS more in foreign markets. The financial statement adds that the games maker plans to concentrate on “proactively releasing key Nintendo titles” starting the second half of this year “in order to regain momentum.” Those key titles will have to hit hard, as certain competitors‘ new consoles are creeping closer.

In related news, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is taking on a second role as CEO at Nintendo of America, today’s report states. Current NoA figurehead Reggie Fils-Aime will stay on as COO, overseen directly by Iwata.

Filed under: Gaming, Nintendo

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Source: Nintendo

Apple has been on a roll for, well, almost as long as we can remember. Basically since the debut of the iMac, the company has been riding a rocketship back from the brink of irrelevance. The iPod, iPhone and iPad have all led it to post record quarter, after record quarter, after record quarter. Now we’re in the second quarter of financial year 2013 and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down much. The company posted $43.6 billion in revenue during the quarter and net itself a handsome profit of $9.5 billion. While those numbers do represent the slowest rate of growth Cupertino has seen in years, it’s hardly the fall from grace that some analysts were predicting. Compared to the same time last year, revenues are up from $39.2 billion though net income has dropped from the Q2 2012 mark of $11.6 billion. Still, the company managed to move more iPhones and iPads than it did during that quarter, and the drop from Q1’s holiday-boosted numbers isn’t particularly alarming. In total it moved 19.5 million iPads and 37.4 million iPhones during the three months ending on March 30th, 2013. In Q1 those numbers were an admitedly more impressive 22.9 milion and 47.8 million, respectively. But, compared to Q2 of 2012, things are still looking up from the 35.1 million iPhones and 11.8 million iPads shipped.

Things are a little less rosy around its non-iOS departments, but we’d hardly say the company was in dire straights. Mac sales were more or less flat both sequentially and year-over-year, falling just under four million units. Meanwhile, the iPod continued its steady decline, moving only 5.6 million units. That’s not only more than a 50 percent drop from last quarter, but a 27 percent drop from the same period last year. The biggest contributor to Apple’s revenue stream continues to be the iPhone, but the iPad is gaining fast and income from iTunes and its other software offerings continues to grow at an impressive rate.

While the first year-over-year drop in profits in almost a decade might give some investors pause, there’s little cause for concern for the future of the company. Cupertino’s healthy war chest now sits at $145 billion in cash, up from the $121 billion and change it had at the end of Q4 2012. We’ll be listening in to the conference call at 5 PM and we’ll update with any juicy tidbits after the break.

Filed under: Misc, Mobile, Apple

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Source: Apple

Welcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week’s tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages

As we scratch our head and puzzle over the almost-daily financial results for the last quarter, this week’s missive takes a slightly sentimental look at how two tech companies were faring a decade earlier. Is it unfair to compare the yesteryear Nokia to Google? Possibly. But it was the same year that a certain Engadget regular claimed a best-selling album — so it wasn’t all bad. Toshiba also unveiled a new pin-sharp Ultrabook to stand up to Apple’s Retina displays, and NASA continued the search for habitable planets.

Filed under: Laptops, Alt, Nokia, Google, Intel

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Google’s out with its first quarter earnings this afternoon, and it’s reporting an even $14 billion in revenue, with net income clocking in at $3.35 billion. That’s a 31 percent increase year-over-year on the revenue side, and nearly a half billion dollar increase in net income (up from $2.89 in the same quarter of 2012). Compared to more recent quarters, though, the growth is a bit more flat: both Q3 and Q4 of 2012 were also around the $14 billion mark. In a statement, CEO Larry Page nonetheless characterized the numbers as a “very strong start to 2013,” adding that Google is “working hard and investing in our products that aim to improve billions of people’s lives all around the world.” As for how the company’s Motorola acquisition is working out, that division has seen a fairly steep drop in revenue, from $1.51 billion in the last quarter of 2012 to just over $1 billion this quarter, with it reporting an operating loss of $271 million. You can dig through all the numbers yourself in the press release after the break and at the source link below.

Filed under: Google

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Source: Google, Larry Page (Google+)