Hasta La Gadget!

BlackBerry announced its fiscal Q3 2014 results today, and the numbers aren’t pretty. The company revealed a whopping $4.4 billion GAAP-adjusted loss for the quarter, which includes a write-down on current inventory of around $1.6 billion. It “recognized revenue” on only 1.9 million BlackBerry handsets, compared to 3.7 million in the same period a year ago, but it also claims that it sold around 4.3 million BlackBerrys through to end customers it says, of which 3.2 million were BlackBerry 7 handsets. Whichever way you look at that, it’s not good.

BlackBerry stressed the growth of Enterprise Services, Messaging, and QNX Embedded OS in auto and cloud as high points, and noted a change in corporate structure in which those are given more equal weight against its Devices unit. And as for the Devices unit, BlackBerry announced a partnership with Foxconn that will span five years and kick off with a smartphone unit designed specifically for “Indonesia and other fast-growing markets in early 2014.”

This partnership could offload the majority of BlackBerry’s hardware inventory management duties to Foxconn, and Mexico is named as another early target for devices coming out of the arrangement. Essentially, it sounds much more like BlackBerry is making Foxconn a licensee with more or less full control over its smartphone division, while it continues to work on services and software in-house. It could be a good way to offload the risk and responsibility of handset production while still selling to its remaining market strongholds.

Earnings for this quarter were dismal, and missed already bleak analyst expectations. The company is in yet another transition phase as it looks to its new CEO John Chen to help it recover from the lasting damage done by the BlackBerry 10 launch and the very poor sales of Z10 and Q10 handsets. No one expected them to do well this time around, but a $4.4 billion loss is over four times what it suffered even last quarter, so it’s clear that changes at the faltering company have just begun.

[Illustration: Bryce Durbin]

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

Comments

In a Chinese press release we just received, phone maker Xiaomi has just announced that it generated a revenue of CN¥13.27 billion or about $2.16 billion in the first half of 2013. This easily exceeds the company’s CN¥12.6 billion or $2.05 billion revenue from the entirety of 2012, so things are already looking good ahead of the annual event on August 16th, when multiple products are expected to be launched — including a TV that got leaked last month.

CEO Lei Jun said that this is partly thanks to the 7.03 million Xiaomi Phones his company sold within the same period, and the release also praised the popularity of the Xiaomi Box plus various other accessories, such as the new in-ear headphones launched recently. In addition to that, Xiaomi now has 20 million users from around the world as of end of June, 14.22 million of which come from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The latter two became part of Xiaomi’s larger scope in April this year, with Hong Kong using the classic online retail model, and Taiwan doing the same but also selling devices through a partnership with local carrier Far Eastone.

Despite the surprising good announcements, Lei reminds his team at today’s celebration party to “forget about the results, they’re not the most important,” and that “only making products that make users scream can bring in long-term value.” The real challenge now is to tap into the more exotic markets, and Xiaomi has previously expressed great interest in Europe. Good luck with that, Lei!

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Comments

The bloom is slightly off the rose for Facebook. After a banner first post-IPO quarter, it’s recording a net loss in its fiscal third quarter of $59 million despite its revenue climbing to $1.26 billion — a big swing that the company is blaming on payroll tax tweaks and income taxes, which becomes clearer when you learn that the company posted a $311 million profit before factoring in standard accounting practices. Facebook hasn’t said exactly what had the biggest impact, although its closing the Instagram deal wouldn’t have helped matters. Still, the company isn’t glum about its prospects: following an earlier mention of the milestone by founder Mark Zuckerberg, the earnings report touts that there are over 1.01 billion active Facebook users who check in at least once a month, over 604 million of which were mobile. Between a reworked iOS app, a freshened Facebook Messenger and new ad-friendly SDKs, the social network is bracing for a potential bonanza ahead.

Continue reading Facebook posts $59 million net loss in fiscal Q3, touts 1.01 billion active users

Filed under: Internet, Facebook

Facebook posts $59 million net loss in fiscal Q3, touts 1.01 billion active users originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Oct 2012 16:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

The past three months haven’t been the best for Finland’s former world number one. It hasn’t been helped by the three biggest credit agencies lowering the company’s bond rating to “junk,” and the Lumia 900’s violently slashed price. Unfortunately the latest results reveal continuing gloom: the manufacturer made an operating loss of $1.01 billion dollars for the quarter. The company managed to make €7.5 billion in sales ($9.2 billion, down .5 billion since the last quarter), shifting four million Lumia handsets in the process. In fact, the only cause for optimism is that sales of the Lumia range have roughly doubled each quarter.

The number of handsets pushed out the door increased (thanks to the Asha range of budget phones) with the company selling 73 million phones. That said, the company has clearly failed to crack America, selling a paltry 600,000 handsets in the States. The cash pile has also continued to dwindle, with the piggybank currently standing at €4.1 billion ($5.1 billion), down from $6.3 billion in Q1, despite getting a further $250 million in kickbacks from Microsoft. Unsurprisingly, the prediction for the third quarter of the year was similarly dour, summed up rather euphemistically as “difficult.”

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia’s Q2 2012 financials: 4 million Lumias sold, $1.01 billion dollar loss originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Nokia (PDF)  | Email this | Comments