Hasta La Gadget!

Borders Group, Inc. is finishing up preparations for a bankruptcy filing, according to “people familiar with the matter.” The company’s financial troubles have been no secret as of late, and those same people familiar with such matters say that the filing could come as early as next Monday, which will be followed by the closure of roughly 200 of its brick and mortar stores, and plenty of job losses. Borders has struggled with its digital presence, including its lack of e-reader (the Kobo partnership came pretty late in the game and isn’t really on the same level as Barnes and Noble’s Nook or Amazon’s Kindle), and its failure to snag a significant market share of online sales. The people familiar with the matter caution that the filing could be delayed by a few days, however, so we’ll have to sit on the edges of our seats until sometime next week, probably. Hit the source for more financial details.

Borders headed for bankruptcy filing, according to WSJ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Wall Street Journal  | Email this | Comments

The decision to move to WiMAX instead of LTE will probably be second-guessed by pundits and investors for years to come, but regardless, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has emerged as one of the wireless industry’s great comeback kids now that he appears to be succeeding in his goal of turning the carrier’s tailspin right around. The latest victory comes in the form of Sprint’s fourth quarter 2010 results, which reveal its largest subscriber gain since the first and second quarters of 2006 — yes, 2006. Total adds were 1.1 million, though net postpaid adds were only 58,000, suggesting that prepaid services are the big push right now. Additionally, Sprint reported its lowest postpaid customer churn in the fourth quarter of any year in its history at 1.86 percent. On the downside, the company’s still technically in the red, reporting an operating loss of $139 million on revenues of $8.3 billion. Overall, Hesse says they’ve got “momentum” heading into the new year, anticipating net customer additions in 2011. Give us an EVO 4G 2, Dan, and we might just be willing to agree.

Sprint posts best customer gains in five years originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Sprint  | Email this | Comments

Microsoft just announced it’s had itself a solid second quarter, posting an $6.63 billion profit on record revenues of $19.95 billion. That’s more or less about the same as last year, when it racked up a $6.66 billion profit on $19 billion in revenue — and while the numbers look stable and Redmond managed to slightly beat estimates, things are changing fast underneath the bottom line: strong Kinect and Xbox 360 sales drove Entertainment and Devices Division revenue up 55 percent to $3.6 billion, but Windows and Windows Live revenue fell nearly 30 percent to $5.05 billion. That means the revenue gap between Microsoft’s consumer device business and the Windows business is now just some $1.3 billion, compared to $4.8 billion this time last year — and it undoubtedly explains why Xbox got top billing at Ballmer’s CES keynote this year, after traditionally being ignored, and why Microsoft is moving Windows to ARM as the mobile and tablet spaces heat up.

As for Windows Phone 7, there’s nary a peep, even though Microsoft was just crowing about moving 2 million licenses yesterday — we’re taking that to mean the infant OS hasn’t had any meaningful impact on revenue yet. We’re going to jump on the call at 5:30PM ET, we’ll let you know if anything good happens.

Update: Corrected the profit numbers: it’s a $6.63b profit and a $8.17b operating income, not a $8.17b profit.

Update 2: As noted by our friend Michael Gartenberg, Microsoft’s Q210 Windows division revenue was boosted by the inclusion of $1.71 billion in deferred Windows 7 upgrade sales and OEM pre-sales, so if you take those out, the gap between Windows and Xbox went from 3.1 billion in Q210 to 1.3 billion this quarter, and Windows sales are down 8 percent. It’s not a huge change for the big picture, but it’s worth noting the revenue deferral in context — Microsoft moved cash around so it would have a huge launch quarter for Windows 7, and now things are evening out.

Microsoft announces Q2 earnings: $6.63b profit, Xbox revenue up 55%, Windows down 29% originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Microsoft, Detailed Earnings  | Email this | Comments

Stephen Elop’s first quarterly results as Nokia CEO have just come out, and while the company’s still growing, others seem to be speeding ahead of it. Nokia’s reporting its converged mobile devices (smartphones, to you and us) reached volumes of 28.3 million during Q4 2010, which is a neat bump from 20.8 million at the same time last year and 26.5 million in the previous quarter. However, in the context of the broader smartphone marketplace, that figure now amounts to only a 31 percent share, according to Nokia’s own estimates, which is a major dip relative to its 40 percent slice in Q4 2009 and 38 percent in Q3 2010. Elop’s perspective on the matter is as follows:

“In Q4 we delivered solid performance across all three of our businesses, and generated outstanding cash flow. Additionally, growth trends in the mobile devices market continue to be encouraging. Yet, Nokia faces some significant challenges in our competitiveness and our execution. In short, the industry changed, and now it’s time for Nokia to change faster.”

When your operating profit goes from €1.47b (€950m net) a year ago to €1.09b (€745m net) this year, the response should indeed be to change and to change fast. Nokia’s still not disclosing sales figures of the N8, but given that this was the first full reporting period where the company’s Symbian flagship has been on sale, it doesn’t seem to have had quite the impact Espoo will have hoped for. Wanna try again with the N9?

Update: Nokia’s investor relations call has borne a few more interesting tidbits from the new man in charge. Elop is quoted as saying Nokia must “build or join a competitive ecosystem,” with the latter verb in that sentence sure to renew discussions of why the Finnish company should / shouldn’t switch to an OS such as Android or Windows Phone 7. We still think that’ll be the very last resort over in Espoo, but Elop apparently thinks Nokia has the brand recognition and operator relationships to make such a move if it wanted to. Which of course it doesn’t. Or does it? Let’s wait for Nokia’s Strategy and Financial Briefing in London on February 11th — Mr. Elop’s expected to be a lot more specific about his company’s roadmap going forward on that day.

Nokia smartphone market share shrinks to 31 percent, operating profit takes a beating too originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Nokia  | Email this | Comments

Hey, this interim CEO thing doesn’t seem to be too hard at all. Thomas Seifert, the temporary solution to the problem created by Dirk Meyer’s departure from AMD’s top spot, has had a pretty comfy ride reporting the company’s latest quarterly results. The pecuniary numbers themselves ($1.65b revenue, $375m net income) were tame and unexciting, but Seifert got to make a pair of juicy milestone announcements. Firstly, on the mobile and ever-so-efficient front, he noted that 1.3 million Fusion APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) have been shipped to partners since AMD started deliveries in November, and secondly, in terms of discrete graphics chips, he disclosed that the Radeon HD 5000 and HD 6000 series DirectX 11 GPUs have surpassed the 35 million units shipped mark. To give you some perspective on what that means, sales of Nintendo’s bestselling Wii console are hovering somewhere around the same figure. So yes, AMD, your wagon has momentum, but shouldn’t it have a driver too?

Continue reading AMD ships 1.3 million Fusion APUs, 35 million DirectX 11 GPUs, says it has ‘momentum’

AMD ships 1.3 million Fusion APUs, 35 million DirectX 11 GPUs, says it has ‘momentum’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Jan 2011 07:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink X-bit labs  |  AMD CFO commentary (PDF)  | Email this | Comments