Jul/100
PS3 and Bravia sales boost quarterly Sony profits above expectations
Earlier this summer, Sony closed another fiscal year of being in the red, but it’s starting the 2010/11 ledger with its quill dipped firmly in the black inkwell. For the quarter ending June 30, the Japanese megacorp clocked up ¥25.7 billion ($293 million) in pure, unadulterated profit off the back of a ¥67 billion operating income. When you compare that to the performance this time last year, a ¥37 billion loss, you have to agree that the Stringer purse-tightening program seems to have delivered the desired effect. The primary drivers for the current resurgence are pinpointed as the PlayStation 3 and Bravia lines (frankly, we consider the two utterly inseparable), and Sony’s feeling so buoyant about it all that it’s revising its projection for the coming year’s revenues upwards today. The good news is tempered, however, by the threat of a rising Yen, which has already claimed Nintendo’s profits as its first victim.
PS3 and Bravia sales boost quarterly Sony profits above expectations originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jul/100
Microsoft reports $4.5b in profit, a record $16.04b in revenue
This time last year, almost to the day, Microsoft saw its first annual sales decline in history. Things are looking much better now, with the company reporting a record $16.04 billion in revenue, a 22 percent year-over-year increase for its Q4 revenue ending June 30th. In fact, revenue is up across all divisions, with Windows and Windows Live seeing the biggest uptick (43.5 percent to $4.55 billion) followed by Entertainment and Devices (27.3 percent to $1.6 billion). Operating income, on the other hand, paints a different picture of E&D, showing a $172 million loss for this quarter (compared to $141 loss in Q4 last year), but looking over the entire fiscal year, the home of Xbox and Zune this year did $679 million in operating income — a sizable jump to the $108 million from 2009. The overall operating income for the company is $5.93 billion this quarter (net income $4.52 billion), a 49 percent increase over last Q4, and $20.36 billion for the year (18 percent compared with fiscal 2009).
We know you’re interested in comparisons, so we’ll just go ahead and break it down for ya: the gang in Redmond is still beating Apple in both revenue ($16.04 billion vs. $15.7 billion) and profit ($4.52 billion vs. $3.25), but that margin feels smaller than it used to. Enough to keep the rumored pressure off Ballmer? Frankly, we don’t even think biplanes could knock the man off the top of a tower, but Windows Phone 7 has a lot to prove, and fast. Microsoft is hosting a webcast of its report later today — usually much ado about nothing, as far as we’re concerned, but we’ll listen in and let ya know if anything interesting pops up.
Update: Some interesting Xbox 360 statistics. 1.5 million consoles were sold this last quarter. Xbox Live has 25 million members, and for the first time since its inception, the revenue from the Marketplace exceeded subscription revenue.
Microsoft reports $4.5b in profit, a record $16.04b in revenue originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jul/100
Microsoft layoffs: the axeman cometh? (update)
Nothing like rumors of corporate layoffs to throw 89,000 Microsoft employees into unproductive turmoil. This time the rumors are being mongered by the Wall Street Journal and TechFlash, both of whom have been told to expect “far smaller” cuts than the 5,000 heads lost during the global financial downturn. And while it’s easy to come to the conclusion that this round of layoffs is the result of the Kin debacle, keep in mind that Microsoft is entering a new fiscal year — the perfect time (from a budgetary perspective) to trim down and refocus on new strategies. Still, if this does affect the Kin team, then let’s just hope that the skilled engineers toiling inside the project’s pink trenches are spared when the reductions begin as soon as today, according to TechFlash. While J Allard may be gone, one executive alone doesn’t create a culture and governance model that builds multi-million dollar silos of duplication and then turns a blind eye to inter-team stonewalling. We say aim high when it comes time to swing that axe Microsoft.
Update: TechFlash is now reporting that, yes, Redmond has wielded its handled blade. At this point it’s suggested to run only in the hundreds across the globe, and “the low hundreds in the Seattle region,” across several groups. Sounds indeed more like a pruning of its over 88,000-strong workforce and less like Kin fallout.
Microsoft layoffs: the axeman cometh? (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jul/100
Microsoft layoffs: the axeman cometh?
Nothing like rumors of corporate layoffs to throw 89,000 Microsoft employees into unproductive turmoil. This time the rumors are being mongered by the Wall Street Journal and TechFlash, both of whom have been told to expect “far smaller” cuts than the 5,000 heads lost during the global financial downturn. And while it’s easy to come to the conclusion that this round of layoffs is the result of the Kin debacle, keep in mind that Microsoft is entering a new fiscal year — the perfect time to trim down and refocus on new strategies. Still, if this does affect the Kin team, then let’s just hope that the skilled engineers toiling inside the project’s pink trenches are spared when the reductions begin as soon as today, according to TechFlash. While J Allard may be gone, one executive alone doesn’t create a culture and governance model that builds multi-million dollar silos of duplication and then turns a blind eye to inter-team stonewalling. We say aim high when it comes time to swing that axe Microsoft.
Microsoft layoffs: the axeman cometh? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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May/100
HP Taiwan reportedly reaffirms pre-October launch for webOS tablet
Don’t mind us taking a few grains of salt on this one, but according Digitimes, HP Taiwan Vice President Monty Wong has confirmed a webOS-powered tablet is due out in the market before the fiscal year ending in October. This jibes with what we heard earlier this month, including the common sense caveat that more details will be forthcoming only after the Palm acquisition is completed near the end of July. Now, we won’t be surprised one iota if this comes to fruition — HP itself has gone on record numerous times as wanting to throw the onetime mobile-exclusive OS on everything from tablets (yay) to printers (huh). Still, everything we know about it so far comes via words and whispers to third-party sources, or the voice in our head dreaming up ideal product lines — neither of which, unfortunately, we can put our complete trust in.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
HP Taiwan reportedly reaffirms pre-October launch for webOS tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 May 2010 12:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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May/100
NVIDIA puts its Tegra 2 eggs in Android’s basket, aims to topple Apple’s A4
Microsoft’s Kin One and Kin Two might not turn out to be the most auspicious devices for Tegra’s debut in the smartphone arena, but NVIDIA seems to be learning from its mistakes. Admitting that the company committed too strongly to Microsoft with the first-gen iteration, Jen-Hsun Huang has now said that the second generation of Tegra will look to Android devices first and foremost. This newfound focus will materialize with both smartphones and tablets in the third and fourth quarter of this year, and will, according to Jen-Hsun, offer device makers a viable competitor to Apple’s A4 SOC. In other news, NVIDIA has now shipped “a few hundred thousand” Fermi cards, and has also achieved 70 design wins with its Optimus graphics switching technology. Eleven of those are now out in the wild, but the vast majority are still to come, mostly as part of the seasonal “back to school” refresh at the end of the summer. These revelations came during the company’s earnings call for the first quarter of its 2011 fiscal year, and you can find the full transcript at the source below.
[Thanks, TareG]
NVIDIA puts its Tegra 2 eggs in Android’s basket, aims to topple Apple’s A4 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 04:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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May/100
Nintendo net profit declines for first time in six years, panic remains inadvisable
Nintendo’s 2009 financial results have just been released and, shockingly enough, the company hasn’t been able to break its profit record yet again. In fact, annual net profit dipped — for the first time in six tenths of a decade — to $2.44 billion, a 12 percent drop from the previous fiscal year’s $2.79 billion. Sales of the Wii were down 21 percent year-on-year, but Nintendo still managed to shift 20 million units globally, so it’s not exactly all doom and gloom at Mario HQ. And while Microsoft and Sony are working on their own motion-sensing offerings, Ninty is reloading the only way it knows how — bringing the noir Wii to fashion-conscious Americans, and an all-new 3D portable console for the rest of us. Anyone willing to bet against Nintendo’s income sheet improving next year?
[Original image courtesy of Anarkyman]
Nintendo net profit declines for first time in six years, panic remains inadvisable originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 May 2010 06:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Mar/100
Nintendo accounts for nearly 25% of GameStop’s new product purchased in fiscal 2009
Of the many, many games that GameStop sold in 2009 (not to mention the millions of dollars it made), we were left wondering where the lion’s share of the game retail juggernaut’s capital went in terms of product that the company was actually buying for its stores. And in a recent SEC filing for the last financial year, the company an unsurprising leader: Nintendo took the top spot, with 23 percent of GameStop’s “new product purchases” in fiscal year 2009. Sony trailed in second place by only five less points at 17 percent, while MIcrosoft, EA, and Activision picked up 12, 12, and 11 percent (respectively).
The remaining 25 percent presumably belongs to various third party peripherals and game-related items available for sale in the retail chain’s stores. That said, while over 41 percent of GameStop’s sales come from new products (read: from the vendors listed above) over the 26 percent coming from used game sales, the vast majority of revenue is still very much coming from used game sales, and thusly, the company’s number one vendor: you.
Nintendo accounts for nearly 25% of GameStop’s new product purchased in fiscal 2009 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Mar/100
Want more on the PlayStation Move? Head over to Joystiq!
Sony’s calling the PlayStation Move the “next generation” of motion gaming and planning to market it as heavily as an entirely new console, so it’s sort of a big deal — and that means our main dudes at Joystiq are all over it. We’ve already covered the main details, but hit the links below if you’re looking for some seriously deep dives.
- SOCOM 4 to support PlayStation Move
- EyePet to support PlayStation Move, hits North America holiday 2010
- Move supported by 36 companies, 20 games this fiscal year
- The PlayStation Move games (we know of)
- Hands-on: SOCOM 4 (with PlayStation Move!)
- Hands-on: PlayStation Move’s ‘The Shoot’
- Hands-on: PlayStation Move’s ‘Move Party’
- Hands-on: PlayStation Move’s Sports Champions
- We touched it: PlayStation Move from every angle
- ‘Arc’ lives on in PlayStation Move’s logo
Want more on the PlayStation Move? Head over to Joystiq! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Dec/090
Palm loses $85.4 million in latest reported quarter — hey, it’s an improvement
We don’t know just how quickly Palm (or Elevation Partners, for that matter) thought it’d become profitable following the release of webOS, but it’s not there quite yet — the company is in the process of outing its earnings for the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 right now, and in a word, they’re still in the red. The good news is that it’s a marked improvement from last quarter — they’ve gone from a $164.5M GAAP net loss to an $85.4M one this time around. On a non-GAAP gross basis, they actually made $5.5M, which is up from $2.8M a quarter earlier. They’ve got $590 million in cash and other “short-term investments” on the book right now, which seems like it should be enough to keep the company going without a profit or additional cash infusion for at least a few additional quarters, but then again, burn rate is going to vary with just how much hardware and software R&D they’re doing and the kinds of carrier deals they’re scoring. We bet they’re looking forward to this Verizon business going down, eh?
Update: Palm’s specifically saying that they’re looking to grow carrier and geographic coverage right now — a good plan, if we say so ourselves.
Update 2: They’ve sold 784,000 phones in the quarter, which compares to 823,000 in the last — a 5 percent drop. That’s up 41 percent from the same quarter a year ago… but yeah, of course it’s going to be way up from the pre-webOS days.
Update 3: Over 800 apps in the catalog so far, once they graduate from the Early Access Program exclusivity, Palm foresees a “flood” of apps. No plans right now to change SDK strategy to a more native development environment.
Palm loses $85.4 million in latest reported quarter — hey, it’s an improvement originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Dec/090
Wii parts production said to be shrinking, still plenty of Wiis being sold
Wii parts production said to be shrinking, still plenty of Wiis being sold originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Dec/090
Microsoft shifting internal focus to Windows 8 in July 2010
Ah, the tormented life of a Microsoft employee. You spend a few years of your life nurturing a product, teaching it some new tricks, and before you know it you have to release it into the wild and start all over again. Coincidentally, Microsoft also seems to do a lot of hiring during that tumultuous switchover period, and its latest round of job postings have offered a few clues as to what we can expect in Windows 8, and when the company plans to focus on it in earnest. That will apparently happen at the start of the company’s 2011 fiscal year, which translates to July, 2010 for everyone else. As for Windows 8 itself, it seems that Microsoft is particularly interested in finding a few folks to work on how Windows Update works in the latest iteration of the OS, including things third-party application updating, updating virtual machines when they’re turned off, and delivery of full applications — Windows 8 Server and a “new UX framework” also garnered a brief mention. Hit up the link below for some additional details, and links to the actual postings if you happen to be looking for a job.
Microsoft shifting internal focus to Windows 8 in July 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jul/090
Microsoft sees first annual sales decline in its history for fiscal 2009
Microsoft’s fiscal year 2009 just came to a close, and the new milestones for the company aren’t too boast worthy. Year-over-year, the company saw a 3.2 percent decline in sales, its first drop in the company’s history — guess that third quarter report was a pretty good indication of things to come. Net profit, too, fell 17 percent to $14.57 billion. Looking at just the fourth quarter, sales fell 17 percent to $13.1 billion, and profits saw a pretty massive 29 percent drop, to $3.05 billion. Attributing to the decline were legal charges and severance claims from laid off employees, a referral of revenue from the Windows 7 Upgrade program, and of course overall drop in PC and server sales across the industry. So far the stock market has acted as you’d expect, and shares have dropped a notable eight percent. Despite all this gloom, let’s not forget that the boys in Redmond are still pulling a profit — and hey, cheer up Steve, you’ve got one helluva bright light for fiscal 2010.
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Software
Microsoft sees first annual sales decline in its history for fiscal 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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