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BlackBerry has just reported a $935 million hit in Q2 due entirely to what it’s calling a “Z10 Inventory Charge” — in other words, a loss associated with creating a stock of flagship handsets that subsequently failed to sell. Echoing Microsoft’s catastrophic write-down due to unsold Surface RT inventory, this single loss was enough to wipe out much of the company’s quarterly revenue of $1.6 billion. When added to a further loss due to corporate restructuring, it resulted in a final GAAP loss for BlackBerry of $965 million. It’s hard to gauge exactly how many of the newer BB 10 handsets (namely the Z10 and Q10) sold during the quarter, but BlackBerry admits that “most” of the 3.7 million units that reached end users were older BlackBerry 7 devices, so the figures can’t be pretty. For his part, Thorsten Heins says he’s “very disappointed” with the results, but he claims the company saw growth in enterprise server (BES 10) customers and he insists there’s still a future in that side of the business — a future that could soon belong to someone else.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Blackberry

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Source: MarketWired

Sprint’s latest financials show that while the network is slowly stemming the flow of cash from its veins, it’s not quite there in terms of turning a profit. The country’s third biggest carrier suffered a $767 million net loss and an operating loss of $231 million — much less than the $629 million operating loss it had in Q2, but on-par with the $208 million lost in the same period last year. The business did manage to bring in total revenues of $8.8 billion, but had to take a hit on a $397 million write-down on costs related to Network Vision and the continued pain of the Nextel shutdown.

On the customer size, it added a further 900,000 users, sold 1.5 million iPhones and a further 1 million “LTE smartphones” in the quarter. Those with long memories will know that the company sold the same number of Apple handsets in the last two quarters, with around 40 percent going to new customers then as now. However, churn, the deadly enemy of all carriers, increased to 1.88 percent, up from 1.69 percent in Q2. The network did manage to coax 59 percent of former Nextel customers to stay tied up with Big Yellow, which may account for it selling nearly 1.2 million Direct Connect devices. While it’s hardly a rosy estimation of Sprint’s financial health, this report doesn’t take into account Softbank’s $20.1 billion buy-out or the regained controlling stake in Clearwire — so we’re expecting the next financial announcement to contain some more exciting news.

Update: During the conference call, Dan Hesse was asked about adopting a shared data plan to rival Verizon and AT&T, but unlike the last call, he was dismissive of the idea.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Sprint sells 1.5 million iPhones, 1 million other smartphones, but makes a net loss of $767 million originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Normally shake ups in management and earnings outlooks don’t really grab our attention. But, buried in the PR for just such moves from HP today was a particularly intriguing tidbit of information. In Q3 the company expects to be hit for $8 billion in pre-tax assets (but not cash) as part of an “impairment of goodwill” charge related to the purchase of Electronic Data Systems. That’s in addition to a $1.5 billion charge it’ll be absorbing following the layoff of some 27,000 employees in May. While the company has actually raised its earnings outlook for the quarter, we’ll have to wait till August 22nd to find out just how much these two charges will affect the bottom line. For some more detail, check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading HP expects to take $8 billion hit over its purchase of EDS

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

HP expects to take $8 billion hit over its purchase of EDS originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG has released its earnings statement for the Q2 2012 period, the claim of “turning a corner” in Q1 has just managed to hold up as it registered net profits of $138 million, up 46 percent from the same period last year. Revenues, while higher than Q1, were actually down from last year and blamed on declines in featurephone sales and slow sales of IT products. The mobile division also struggled after a strong Q1 and took an operating loss, however the positive takeaways are a rising percentage of smartphone shipments and plans to launch new LTE-connected models in North America (we’ve spotted the likely Spectrum 2 for Verizon already), Europe and Asia later this year. The good news for the home theater segment continued however, with an operating profit of more than double last year at $187.5 million despite slightly lower sales due to an increase in sales of premium products like its Cinema 3D HDTVs, which it expects to become the “top global seller” in the 3D segment. There’s more details in the press release after the break or PDF linked below if you need more numbers.

Continue reading LG Q2 2012 earnings show a loss on cellphones, but higher profits overall thanks to home theater

LG Q2 2012 earnings show a loss on cellphones, but higher profits overall thanks to home theater originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 00:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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