Hasta La Gadget!

After three years of record earnings, the mighty house that Mario built is reporting a net loss of ¥2.01 billion ($25 million) in the fiscal first half ending 30 September versus a profit of ¥69.49 billion a year earlier. In addition to the adverse affects suffered under a strong yen, Nintendo’s sales for the first half of its fiscal year were down 35 percent to ¥363.16 billion due to lower demand for its Wii console. According to the Wall Street Journal, this represents Nintendo’s first net loss in the fiscal first half in the last seven years. The future outlook is pretty grim too with Nintendo forecasting an annual profit drop to the lowest level in six years as Wii console sales decline for the second year in a row. Ouch.

Nintendo posts half-year net loss, a first in seven years originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 05:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By subscriber count, Verizon had vaulted into first place by a pretty comfortable margin following its Alltel acquisition, but AT&T added significantly more customers this last quarter than Big Red did — and just like that, the battle for first place among the US national carriers is starting to get hot again. Verizon added 997,000 customers (excluding acquisitions) in the July through September period versus AT&T’s beefy 2.6 million, meaning AT&T now stands at some 92.8 million — just 400,000 or so fewer that Verizon’s headcount. Nothing like an exclusive iPhone launch to give you a little boost, right? On the plus side, Verizon’s postpaid churn in the quarter was low at 1.07 percent, and Verizon Communications as a whole earned 31 cents per share — lower than its second quarter pre-adjustment EPS of 58 cents, but a heck of a lot higher than the 7 cent loss it actually posted in Q2.

Outside of wireless, the company added 226,000 and 204,000 FiOS internet and television customers, respectively, bringing the totals to 3.9 and 3.3 million; FiOS ARPU is up nearly 11 percent year over year, and the company claims that its FiOS business now represents about half of its consumer revenues — pretty impressive. Follow the break for Verizon’s full press release.

Continue reading Verizon adds fewer customers than AT&T in Q3, race for first place gets tight

Verizon adds fewer customers than AT&T in Q3, race for first place gets tight originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia’s quarterly results have just been made public and the company’s devices plus services sector has actually improved its income relative to last year: €7.2b of revenue was collected over the past three months versus €6.9b in the same period a year ago. Operating profit has also pepped up, going from the previous €785m to €807m. You’d think this would augur well for Stephen Elop‘s beginning at the helm, but the new man in charge is also presiding over a fundamental restructuring of operations at Nokia, which is expected to result in the redundancy of up to 1,800 employees globally. There are no specifics to tell us who’ll be losing out, but the aims are the boilerplate tasks of increasing efficiency, simplifying operations, and reducing time to market. Anyway, we doubt the great people of Finland will be pleased.

Continue reading Nokia reports improved earnings for Q3 2010, will still ‘streamline’ up to 1,800 employees out of a job

Nokia reports improved earnings for Q3 2010, will still ‘streamline’ up to 1,800 employees out of a job originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steve Jobs hit today’s earnings call with the power of words. In a tone that could be described as “righteous anger” or perhaps just “reppin,” Steve launched into a five minute rant that hit hard against RIM’s entire business model, Android sales numbers and software fragmentation, and the impending wave of Android tablets. With the iPhone surpassing RIM, Steve says that he “[doesn’t] see them catching up in the foreseeable future.” As for Android sales, Steve takes issues with the market share figures that are currently floating around, saying that 275k iOS devices were activated on average per day last month, compared to Android’s most recent estimate of 250k per day — though he does admit that Android outshipped iPhone in the June quarter, during the “transition” to iPhone 4. That wasn’t Steve’s only problem with Android, he takes major issue with the fragmentation and the onus he believes it puts on the user: “we believe integrated will trump fragmented every time.”

Oh, and 7-inch tablets? You’re in for a bag of hurt. Steve pretty much outright killed any potential for 7-inch iPad rumors, saying that the software just isn’t right for that size (“This size is useless unless you include sandpaper so users can sand their fingers down to a quarter of their size.”), and that users have no need for a pocket sized tablet when they already have a smartphone. He called the iPad’s upcoming competition in the space “DOA.” After he calmed down a bit, the call entered a Q&A period, where Steve was happy to point out that the iPad has already surpassed Macintosh in sales, and that it’s going to affect laptop computers: “it’s not if, it’s when.” We’ll get a copy of the audio and put it up as soon as possible… like most CEO outbursts, this is not one to be missed. Hit up our liveblog of the call for a bit more context, and you can try the source link for Apple’s stream of the entire earnings shindig.

Update: We just ripped the first part of the call, which featured Steve’s prepared remarks — we’ll have an edited version of the Q&A session in just a bit.

Update 2: And here’s an edited version of the Q&A with just Jobs’s answers — hit the source link for Apple’s archive of the whole thing with Peter and Tim’s answers as well.

Update 3: And just for the completists out there, here’s an MP3 of both segments combined.

Steve Jobs drops knowledge on earnings call: calls out Google and RIM, says 7-inch tablets are ‘DOA’ (Update: complete Jobs audio!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like Intel’s having its best quarter ever all over again: this time, the company’s reporting $3.0 billion in profit on a record $11.1 billion in revenue. Chipzilla attributes the surplus to three percent increases in laptop and server chips sales respectively, but none to Atom-based netbooks — sales of Atom chips actually decreased by four percent. That may be more than you needed or wanted to know about the booming processor business, but humanitarians will be pleased to know it’s not all about the silicon; Intel also hired 1,300 new flesh-and-blood employees last quarter to keep the machines running.

Intel reports record $11.1 billion revenue, brings home $3 billion in bacon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 18:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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