Hasta La Gadget!

Sony’s first earnings report of the new financial year is in and it’s eked out a profit, albeit a small one. The $35 million net profit is an improvement from last year’s results for the same period, and the good news is most pronounced in its Mobile Products & Communications department. Revenue grew 36 percent from last year, partially due to changes in the value of the yen, but also thanks to higher sales for smartphones (9.6 million units), and a higher average selling price. The games division recorded an operating loss for the quarter, as sales of the PS3, PSP and PS2 dropped slightly while spending on R&D for the upcoming PlayStation 4 rose. Sony’s new TV strategy may have shown some results, with year-on-years sales up 18.2 percent and attributed to an “improved product mix in LCD TVs” and cost reductions.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile, Sony

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Source: Sony Q1 2013 earnings (PDF), Slides

While Dish Network’s $25.5 billion bid for Sprint continues to wave in the breeze, the company has reported its earnings for the first quarter. Net subscriber growth only totaled 36,000 compared to 104,000 in the same period last year, as subscriber churn rose due to a price hike earlier this year. Its profits were lower in Q1 2013 than 2012 partially due to Blockbuster-related drops and a boost received last year from its DBSD purchase. (We’re guessing higher content costs for things like AMC didn’t help either.) A growing percentage of the 654,000 new customers it added got Hopper DVRs, which also raised costs a bit for the new set-top boxes and all those TV advertisements its been running. Even as it waits to add some terrestrial LTE to its “Seinfeld” wireless data strategy, the dishNET satellite broadband service added 66,000 customers in the quarter, up from from just 6,000 new customers in Q1 2012. We’ll have to wait for the earnings call at noon to see if CEO Charlie Ergen has anything else to say about its battle with Softbank to buy Sprint, but all of the data is in the press release and slide below.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Dish Network Q1 2013 investor summary (PDF), Q1 Earnings

Comcast had a dramatic Q4 last year when it announced the buyout of NBCUniversal for $16.7 billion along with the purchase of New York’s iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Still, it’s the cable TV and internet business that pays the freight, and that side of the Comcast’s operations didn’t it let it down in Q1 2013 thanks to a 6.4 percent bump in revenue to $10.2 billion along with 583,000 new subscribers. Other operations didn’t fare as well, as revenue for NBCUniversal dropped 2.4 percent to $5.3 billion, but the overall picture was still pretty sunny, as the communications giant saw an 11.2 percent increase in operating income over last year to $3.1 billion. If you want to see a breakdown by division, check the source for more.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD

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Source: Comcast

Samsung Electronics has released its Q1 2013 numbers and as it predicted a few weeks ago, business continues to boom. Operating profits are 8.78 trillion won as predicted, while net profit is up to 7.15 trillion won ($6.4 billion), up sharply from the same quarter last year when its net profit was 5.50 trillion won. Last year at this time we were still anticipating details on the Galaxy S III, but this time around Samsung is on the eve of its worldwide launch for the Galaxy S 4, which should push sales even higher. According to the documents, it’s maintained a “steady pace” for Galaxy S III sales, while Note II sales increased and the Tab2 series increased momentum. The news isn’t as good for PCs, shipments decreased due to weak demand. earnings in its TV business were also down from last quarter, blamed on the same lower overall market demand noted by LG in its earnings.

While analysts asked the questions w’ed like to hear more about on the earnings call — software updates to Android phones, the future of Tizen — the responses were predictably bland. Samsung did mention it plans to push Android updates to customers faster than the competition, a trend that hopefully catches on. Hit the link below to check out a PDF with all the slides, or look after the break for a press release detailing this quarter’s results.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Samsung (PDF)

Sprint managed to lose a million customers and over a billion dollars last quarter. This time it’s not quite as bad, with a net loss of $643 million on revenue that was broadly equivalent to the same quarter of last year (around $8.8 billion). Those following the carrier’s big iPhone gamble will note that sales of Apple smartphones fell by around a third relative to last quarter, from 2.2 million down to 1.5 million. Total smartphone sales reached 5 million, which Sprint describes as “strong” and which helped it to slightly increase the amount of profit it makes from each postpaid customer. However, this wasn’t enough to offset the impact of losing another half a million customers, specifically due to the ongoing exodus of Nextel subscribers. Partly as a result of this, the company’s revenues continue to be wiped out by its huge costs of doing business — not that its potential suitors seem to mind.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sprint

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Source: Sprint