Nokia reports 65% profit surge in Q4
January 29, 2010
Manufacturer grows marketshare to 39%, handset sales up year on year
Nokia has reported a 65% rise in profits for the fourth quarter ended 31 December.
The manufacturer shipped 127 million phones – an increase of 12% year on year.
It shipped approximately 4.6 million Nseries devices and 6.1 million Eseries devices during theperiod.
Device sales increased globally overall, but there was a decline in sales in Europe, Latin America and North America.
The manufacturer increased handset sales in emerging markets such as China, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
Nokia estimated that its market share had increased by 2% from 37% to 39%, compared to the same period last year.
Nokia CEO, Olli-Peka Kallasvuo said: ‘We grew our market share in smartphones in the fourth quarter, driven by the successful launch of new touch and QWERTY models.
‘Our performance in smartphones, combined with continuing success in emerging markets, helped us increase sales in our devices and services unit, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year.’
Source: Mobile Today
Verizon Suffers Loss of $653M
January 28, 2010
Even with the success of the Motorola Droid, Verizon had a tough fourth quarter.
2009 was a bad year for many businesses with cost cutting measures resulting in significant layoffs for many of the largest tech firms in the world. The economy is starting to come back, but despite the slight rebound, many companies are not expecting a boom in 2010.
Verizon Communications reported its Q4 earnings this week and overall they were what analysts expected. Verizon also stated that it plans to cut an additional 13,000 jobs from its fixed line business this year, which works out to about 6% of the global workforce. Verizon blames the needed cuts on weak corporate spending that is hurting its landline business.
Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said at an analysts meeting, “We’re facing more significant headwinds than we’d thought we’d face.”
Seidenberg promised analysts that Verizon would focus in 2010 on improving profits in fixed line businesses. In 2009 Verizon cut a total of 17,000 jobs and severance charges related to the layoffs gobbled up a portion of the revenue and profit for Verizon. For the quarter, Verizon posted a net loss of $653 million working out to 23 cents per share. In the same quarter of the previous year, Verizon posted a net income of $1.24 billion.
The total charges Verizon took relating to reducing its workforce amounted to $3 billion. The company would have earned 54 cents per share had the workforce reduction costs not been figured in. Overall revenue for the company was $27.1 billion. While the fixed line business at Verizon is struggling, the Verizon Wireless division is doing well. Verizon Wireless added 2.2 million customers during the quarter. Reuters reports that much of that growth can be attributed to the mass marketing of the Motorola DROID smartphone.
Analyst Christopher Larsen from Piper Jaffray said, “It was a solid quarter but not great. Retail wireless subscribers were in line with expectations. Wholesale was meaningfully ahead but they tend to be lower value customers.”
SOURCE: Digital Trends
iPhone Coming to All U.S. Carriers?
January 26, 2010
With the Apple event just two days away, the web is running rampant with rumors. Today’s is a real doozy, as Bloomberg speculates that T-Mobile will get the iPhone this summer with all additional U.S. carriers getting the phone in rapid succession in the following months.
This latest unsubstantiated bit of intel comes by way of Tim Horan, a telecommunications analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. He asserts that not only will AT&T lose exclusivity come mid-year, but T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and Clearwire will all jump on the iPhone bandwagon soon thereafter. “We believe AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity arrangement with Apple will be expiring by mid-2010,” Horan writes. “For wireless carriers, customers are demanding the device and they need to remain competitive.”
We’ve already heard rumblings that the Verizon iPhone is coming soon, and that the end of AT&T’s iPhone monopoly will be announced Wednesday. We also know that the iPhone is now sold by four different carriers in the UK, so there could certainly be some truth to Horan’s assertions.
If we look to the UK as an example, we can also safely assume that Apple would benefit greatly by making its phone available to additional carriers. For proof look no further than Vodafone, who only recently started selling the iPhone in the UK, but managed to move more than 50,000 devices in 24 hours and 100,000 in just seven days.
SOURCE: Mashable
How far should Congress go in stopping prepaid phone traffickers?
January 22, 2010
One prevalent issue among prepaid cellular providers is of traffickers. We’ve discussed this at length on Prepaid Reviews, but for a two-sentence re-hash: Many prepaid providers subsidize boxed handsets, like the ones you’d find at Wal-Mart, so more customers can buy the phones. The companies hope to make the money back when the customer purchases minutes, but that plan is thwarted by traffickers who purchase subsidized handsets in bulk, unlock them, and then sell them at a market rate. Prepaid companies lose big, and so they’ve helped propose the Wireless Prepaid Access Enforcement Act of 2009. There’s a lot to it, and Jennifer Granick of Electronic Frontier Foundation has the analysis. Read more
Apple, Nokia dominate worldwide mobile market
January 22, 2010
Apple and Nokia each control big chunks of the worldwide mobile market and are duking it out for more.
In the final quarter of 2009, Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPhone operating system reigned in markets in Western Europe, North America, Latin America, and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, and nearby countries), according to an AdMob report released Thursday.
Meanwhile, Nokia’s mobile devices and the Symbian OS led in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe,
AdMob sells text and banner ads to publishers on mobile platforms; as such, it tracks and measures which phones and mobile devices are used in which global regions. Read more
Analyst Rumor: Zune Phone coming in next two months
January 20, 2010
Jefferies & Company analyst Katherine Egbert told her clients last night that Redmond is getting ready to launch a phone based on Windows Mobile 7. “Our recent industry checks indicate Microsoft will be debuting its own phone sometime in the next two months,” Egbert said. “We expect the new phone to debut soon, at either the Feb 15-18 Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona Spain, or possibly at CTIA in Las Vegas one month later.” Read more
Motorola rethinking about selling its handset division
January 18, 2010
Motorola might not sell off its mobile phone unit after all, according to a report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.
Unnamed sources have told the Journal that the business unit, which includes handsets and cable TV set-top boxes, hasn’t elicited high enough bids from potential buyers. Motorola is looking for an offer in the range of $4 billion to $5 billion, but has so far received bids between $3 billion and $4 billion, the Journal reports.
The company is also reconsidering whether phones and set-top boxes need be kept together under the same roof, or sold off separately.
Motorola has been looking to split the company for a couple years. It first hatched the plan in early 2008 after several quarters of losses for its handset business. Even worse financial circumstances forced the company to delay the split–expected to be finalized during late 2009–even longer.
There is another round of bids for the phone and set-top unit scheduled to be delivered in mid-February, the Journal’s sources say, so an attractive offer could still keep Motorola’s original plan on track.
SOURCE: Cnet
Apple Wants to Ban Nokia Imports to the US
January 18, 2010
Shareemailshare Nokia and Apple are in the middle of an intense patent war. Apple’s latest counter-strike is a complaint filed with the International Trade Commission (ITC) seeking to block US imports of Nokia mobile devices. This comes on the heels of Nokia’s own complaint seeking to ban imports of iPhones, iPods, and MacBooks. Bloomberg reports that Apple’s efforts to block the import of Nokia devices are tied to yet another patent infringement complaint, and that notice of the complaint appeared yesterday on the ITC’s website.
Leap Wireless Exploring Possible Sale
January 15, 2010
Leap Wireless is close to hiring a bank to help it explore strategic options moving forward, according to sources familiar with the matter. Reuters reports that Leap may hire Goldman Sachs, with which it already has a history. Leap is weighing consolidation and or/and outright sale to a competitor. MetroPCS has previously expressed interest in acquiring and/or merging with Leap Wireless. It made a bid of $5.5 billion for Leap back in 2007, and expressed interest as recently as September 2009. Leap has not officially provided comment on the matter. Leap runs a pre-paid wireless service branded as Cricket.
SOURCE: Phone Scoop
Google’s Nexus One phone sells a mere 20,000 in first week
January 14, 2010
The Google Nexus One sold an estimated 20,000 units in its first week, according to market analytics firm Flurry.
Although the Nexus One received a lot of buzz as Google’s own entry into the Android phone business, the sales number isn’t that impressive. We’ll see if Google actually confirms or disputes this number.
Flurry monitors the usage of more than 10,000 developer applications on iPhone and Android platforms. It tracks over 25 million end user sessions per day. From that, it was able to figure out the first week sales for the Nexus One as well as prior phone launches such as the myTouch 3G, Droid, and iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 3GS sold more than a million units over the first three days of sales in June, 2009. The Droid, an Android phone built by Motorola and launched in November, sold 250,000 units in its first week, more than 12 times as much as the Nexus One. Read more
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