Hasta La Gadget!

If you can find the silver linings, the news is finally getting a little better over at the number three largest carrier in the States after countless quarters of brutal numbers. Sprint still isn’t turning a profit or earning net customer adds, but it’s continuing to stem losses by posting its first sequential rise in revenue in almost three years, clocking just under $8.1 billion for the quarter; that’s still less than the revenue it posted a year ago, but hey, at least it’s an improvement over Q4 2009’s roughly $7.8 billion. All told, that works out to a net loss of $865 million, which is also better than Q4’s $980 million. Net wireless customers fell by 75,000 — considerably better than Q4’s 148,000 — but net postpaid customers fell by a much larger 578,000, suggesting that Boost Mobile’s aggressive marketing is probably working. That’s all well and good, but it also likely means that ARPU is on a downward trend; Sprint claims it was flat sequentially and down a dollar from $56 to $55 year-over-year. All told, it seems the company’s fortunes are improving by baby steps — but is it fast enough? And how much is the EVO 4G going to mix things up?

Sprint halves its quarterly customer loss, increases revenue for the first time in ages originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T’s first quarter results posted this morning look generally quite positive for the company — it saw its highest first-quarter net wireless adds in history (1.9 million) and both postpaid and total churn are at their lowest levels ever, suggesting that subscribers are happier with their service than they have been in recent months, the thought of tantalizing hardware is keeping them around, they’re too worn down to bother switching, or some combination of the above. Net income of $2.4 billion was down a bit year over year — $600 million, to be exact — thanks to a one-time charge related to some tax craziness that only accountants would fully comprehend, but had it not been for that, they’d be looking at having banked $3.5 billion. In other words, the numbers are looking good.

At least the financial numbers are looking good, but what about those dropped calls? AT&T claims that Manhattan — one of the hardest-hit areas in the country, if not the hardest — saw a 6 percent improvement in the first quarter, with the New York metro area improving 9 percent overall. The promised third carrier rollout is claimed to be well underway, and as proof of all this noise, AT&T helpfully provides a pair of graphs — graphs with no perceptible Y-axis units, mind you — showing bigger bars and higher lines in the first quarter than in last. Of course, we still don’t appreciate AT&T bringing its extensive WiFi network into the equation here; it’s still totally non sequitur to the matter at hand, as far as we’re concerned, since even the most extensive WiFi coverage is a drop in the bucket against WWAN footprint. Besides, if these guys can actually meet their proclaimed goal of offering both the fastest and the most reliable 3G data around, it’s a moot point, right?

AT&T’s Q1 results: earnings down thanks to one-time charge, NYC seeing ‘solid improvements’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can it be, did Sony Ericsson just post its first quarterly profit since Q2 2008? Make.Believe it: the fantastically handsome crew from Stockholm is reporting a Q1 2010 net profit of €21 million, besting analysts who were expecting a €128 million loss. Importantly, SE managed to bump the average handset selling price to €134 on 10.5 million sold compared to the 14.5 million sold at an average of €120 a year prior thanks, in part, to the launch of its uneven X10 and buggy Vivaz. For those keeping track, that drops Sony Ericsson’s share of global handset sales down from 5% last quarter to around 4% currently. So yeah, slashing head count and closing facilities has earned Sony Ericsson a short-term win on Wall Street. Remains to be seen, however, if they’re now spread too thin to continue juggling Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Android with expectations for even more Sony Ericsson supported OSes in the future.

Sony Ericsson posts surprise profit from unsurprising handsets originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no doubt the impending legal antics are weighing on hearts and minds inside HTC, but for now, the company’s got other fish to fry — like the first quarter’s financial results, for example. Fortunately, pretty much everything came up roses here with $1.2 billion in revenue, up some 19.3 percent year-over-year and nearly 11 percent higher than the high end of its estimate going into the call, though that still represents an 8 percent drop against the last quarter — holiday quarters are typically blockbusters, so no huge surprise there. HTC credits a “successful” marketing campaign for its success; we credit awesome hardware, but we’d guess the real answer lies somewhere in between. Quietly brilliant, indeed.

HTC beats earnings estimates in the first quarter, cites awesome marketing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm gave us a heads-up back in late February that its upcoming earnings report wouldn’t exactly be cause for celebration, and today the news has become official: the outfit recorded a net loss of $22 million during its fiscal Q3, which still looks rosy compared to the $98 million loss it suffered this quarter a year ago. All told, the firm shipped 960,000 smartphones in the period, which represents a 23 percent uptick from Q2 2010 and a nearly 300 percent increase compared to this quarter in 2009. Unfortunately, sell-through wasn’t exactly stellar, with just 408,000 units changing hands — that’s a 29 percent decline from last quarter and a 15 percent drop year-over-year. We get the impression that it’s waiting for carriers to get down to replenishment levels, but it’s hard to say when that’ll happen. Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s chairman and CEO, was obviously not thrilled about the news, but he’s mirroring statements made to employees just over a fortnight ago with this quote:

“Our recent underperformance has been very disappointing, but the potential for Palm remains strong. The work we’re doing to improve sales is having an impact, we’re making great progress on future products, and we’re looking forward to upcoming launches with new carrier partners. Most importantly, we have built a unique and highly differentiated platform in webOS, which will provide us with a considerable – and growing – advantage as we move forward.”

We’re listening into the earnings call right now, and so far we’ve heard a few choice quotes. Jon mentioned that Palm has “aggressive roadmaps on the software front that we’re working on,” and that there were “no changes to our planned carrier launches.” We’ll let you know if he introduces the Pixi 2 or anything.

Update: The call’s over. PreCentral points out a choice quote from Rubinstein:

We had an arrangement with Sprint that when we launched with Sprint that they would invest in marketing and carry the product and for that they would get an exclusive for a period of time. That really determined when we could do our launch at Verizon. I agree with your premise that if we could have launched at Verizon earlier, prior to Droid, that we would have gotten the attention that the Droid got and since I believe that we have a better product, I think we would have even done better.

In other words, Palm — regardless of Verizon’s positioning — feels like the Pre Plus could’ve been a legitimate contender as a halo phone for the carrier had it been able to launch sooner, though that opportunity has obviously long since passed. We’re not so sure we agree that the Droid and the Pre Plus play in quite the same space, but if nothing else, we like the chutzpah — now it’s time to deliver some new hardware.

Palm posts $22m Q3 loss, says it liked its chances against Droid had Verizon launch been sooner originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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