Hasta La Gadget!

Apple just announced its earnings for the second quarter of the year, and it’s once again beat estimates, with it reporting earnings of $6.40 a share, a total of $24.67 billion in revenue, and a net profit of $5.99 billion. As for the sales breakdown everyone’s waiting for, Apple says it sold a whopping 18.6 million iPhones in the quarter (up 113 percent over the previous year, and ahead of estimates of 16 million), plus 4.69 million iPads (actually less than the expected 6.29 million, apparently due to supply issues), and 3.76 million Macs, which represents a 28 percent jump over the same quarter a year ago. Not surprisingly, iPods are the one area that continues to slow, with sales of 9.02 million representing a 17 percent decline over the previous year — the iPod touch accounted for more than half of those sales. One other big bright spot for the company is the Asia Pacific region, where it saw revenue grow a staggering 151 percent year-over-year.

Interestingly, Apple isn’t providing any specific sales numbers for the iPad 2 — it’s only saying that it sold every iPad 2 it could make in the quarter, and that it’s working hard to get it into the hands of customers as fast as it can. It didn’t add much more when pressed on the issue later during its earnings call either, with it only going as far as to say that the iPad has the “mother of all backlogs.”

Update: The company’s press release is after the break.

Continue reading Apple beats estimates with Q2 earnings: $24.67 billion revenue, $5.99 billion profit

Apple beats estimates with Q2 earnings: $24.67 billion revenue, $5.99 billion profit originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony has a couple of sweet, sweet numbers to report with regard to sales of its gaming hardware. The PlayStation 3, that venerable old powerhouse of console gaming, has surpassed 50 million units shipped around the globe, while the PS Move controller introduced late last year has also kept pace and rounded its own milestone with eight million units shipped. We say “shipped” in spite of Sony calling these sales, because what Sony reports are sales to retailers, not end users (the company calls ’em “sell-in numbers“), so they’re not directly comparable with retail sales of the competition. Still, numbers are numbers, and these are pretty big ones. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Sony ships 50 million PlayStation 3s, eight million Move controllers worldwide

Sony ships 50 million PlayStation 3s, eight million Move controllers worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 06:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gianfranco Lanci’s departure from Acer last month came as a bit of a surprise, but looking at some fresh PC shipment data from the IDC, we can now understand why it had to happen. In Q1 of 2011, Acer suffered a precipitous 42.1 percent drop in PC shipments to the United States, falling from 2.3 million units in the first quarter of 2010 to 1.3 million in the first three months of this year. That’s matched by a global downturn of 15.8 percent for the company’s computer business, taking its market share from 12.9 percent down to 11.2. A percentage point and a half might not seem like much, but in the high stakes business of selling high volumes of devices with low profit margins, that can clearly make the difference between winning and losing, between living and dying (as a CEO). On a happier note, Lenovo surged upwards by 16.3 percent globally amid a market that shrunk a little overall. The IDC — whose numbers are considered preliminary until companies confirm them in their quarterly financial reports — identifies Acer’s exposure to the shrinking interest in netbooks as the chief reason why it’s now having to reorganize itself. That overhaul is already underway with a new logo and some attractively priced tablets, but it’s likely to be a while before Acer gets back to challenging HP for world domination.

Update: Gartner has dropped its figures for the first quarter as well, and while it doesn’t see Acer losing out quite so badly in the US (minus 24.9 percent year-on-year), it agrees on its worldwide market struggles, placing its decrease in shipments at 12.2 percent.

IDC and Gartner’s latest PC shipment stats show why Acer needed to make a strategic change originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A report commissioned by the World Bank’s infoDev unit has cast fresh light on one of the more fascinating aspects of our brave new interconnected world: the virtual economy. The “third-party gaming services industry” — where wealthy but impatient players have someone else grind away at online games for them in exchange for monetary reward — is one of the focal points of the study, chiefly owing to it having generated revenues in the region of $3 billion in 2009 and now serving as the primary source of income for an estimated 100,000 young folks, primarily in countries like China and Vietnam. What’s encouraging about these findings is that most of the revenue from such transactions ends up in the country where the virtual value is produced, which contrasts starkly with some of the more traditional international markets, such as that for coffee beans, where the study estimates only $5.5 billion of the $70 billion annual market value ever makes it back to the producing country. The research also takes an intriguing look at the emerging phenomenon of microwork, which consists of having unskilled workers doing the web’s version of menial work — checking images, transcribing bits of text, bumping up Facebook Likes (naughty!), etc. — and could also lead to more employment opportunities for people in poorer nations. To get better acquainted with the details, check the links below or click past the break.

Continue reading World Bank report finds selling virtual goods in games more profitable than ‘real’ economy

World Bank report finds selling virtual goods in games more profitable than ‘real’ economy originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 04:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When a new console launches you expect it to hit the ground with a big “thwomp” that knocks the competition aside. Nintendo’s 3DS, however, has had something of a softer landing. It released in Japan on February 26th and had been positioned high and proud at the top of the sales charts. However, it’s already been usurped by the humble PSP, which according to Media Create sold 58,075 units in the week of March 28th to April 3rd. The 3DS, meanwhile, sold 42,979. This is in large part thanks to PSP dating sim Amagami, an old PS2 game that’s just been re-released for the portable. It seems nostalgia trumps 3D wizardry again, and with the PSP getting cheaper in Europe this week, the competition is even getting tougher.

3DS outsold by PSP in Japan, gets dumped for a dating sim originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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