latest
Despite all of the criticism OnePlus is receiving for its update policy, its latest phones, and the OnePlus Watch, the company seems to be in a great state. It just reported one of the strongest quarters in Europe ever, with a 388% growth in sales and 286% in revenue compared to Q1 2020, with the UK being in the top three of the best performing markets.
Our pandemic YouTube binge sessions made Google a buttload of money last year
Locking myself in my room to watch Sampson Boat Co. for a week straight really helped the economy
Google's fourth quarter earnings are in, and you might almost be convinced that Covid had no effect on the company, looking at the numbers. Revenue is up 23% year over year, itself an increase compared to our now blissful memories of 2019. Total income is also up almost 70% compared to Q4 2019, at $15.6 billion. The bulk of that growth came from Google's bread-and-butter: Search and YouTube.
The smartphone market is absolutely foundering due to coronavirus, unsurprisingly
Nobody wants to spend money on a phone during a pandemic
The coronavirus has led to lockdowns all over the world and left many people with less to no income or in fear of a recession. Combine that with closed factories, and you have a recipe for economic impacts rippling through all industries. The smartphone market is not immune to these effects, either, and worldwide shipments have fallen by 13% year-over-year (YOY) due to coronavirus. Companies moved only 272 million units in Q1 2020, which is the lowest level since 2013.
Spam and fraud protection are great features to have in apps, especially if they handle your finances. It’s one thing to take precautions, but it’s another to downright block other apps that could enable such nefarious purposes. For Paytm—a well-established, mobile-first payment service in India—remote control and screen sharing apps like TeamViewer and AnyDesk are now considered security risks.
Read update
T-Mobile's boisterous and pugnacious CEO John Legere is in the news again, and this time, it's not for calling Verizon and AT&T "dumb and dumber" or cursing up a storm at some event. According to the Wall Street Journal, John Legere has been singled out as a possible pick for the top CEO position at WeWork.
Samsung had some rather suboptimal financial results over the last year, and the current earning calls for 2019's third quarter show this isn't quite changing. Profits fell sharply compared to the same time frame last year, but at least smartphone sales raked in some profit thanks to the Galaxy Note10 and A series.
Google’s parent company Alphabet announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2019, surpassing revenue expectations. As one might expect, Google products were among the top performers, but everything wasn’t as breezy. Even though revenue is up, the profit margins have come down sharply, leaving investors with less money in hand than what was anticipated.
UPI is the leading digital payment platform in India, which lets users make transfers directly from one bank account to another. It's already used for more than 900 million transactions a month, such as utility bill payments, mobile recharges, in-store purchases, and more. From now on, Indian users will also be able to buy content from the Play Store using the payment solution.
As Xiaomi launches its latest phone in Europe, the Mi 9T Pro, strong sales in overseas markets are said to be a major factor in the Chinese company's stellar second-quarter financial results. A year-on-year increase in adjusted net profit of 71.7% to has been reported, up to RMB 1.96 billion in Q2 2019.
In view of Huawei's recent political troubles, you'd think Samsung would have been in pole position to capitalize and post impressive sales numbers in the second quarter of 2019. Smartphone shipments grew for both companies at a time when global shipments are down 2%, but that doesn't always translate to strong financials. While its Chinese rival managed to grow its revenue against the odds, Samsung has seen its profits drop by an eye-watering 56% year-on-year.
Huawei has just announced its revenue for the first half of 2019, the first time we've had numbers that demonstrate the impact its drama with the US government may have had on its bottom line. Depending on how you choose to look at them, the company has either successfully shrugged things off as it continues to grow, or sales have begun to stall. While the company is seeing a 23% year-over-year (and quarter-over-quarter) revenue increase, still an overall rise compared to last year, smartphone shipments are flat across Q1 and Q2.
It's that joyous time of the year when we're bombarded with long, boring press releases with lots of numbers on that tell how terrible a company is doing — that's right, second-quarter 2019 financial results are in. In news that will shock absolutely nobody, LG and Sony continue to struggle when it comes to sales of smartphones.
The worldwide smartphone market hasn't just slowed, it's been in decline for the last year or so. Whatever you attribute that to — rising prices, longer-lasting devices, fewer necessary improvements — many major OEMs including Samsung and Apple have seen sales weaken. In comparison, though, Huawei continues to see explosive growth, especially in China.
Alphabet — Google's parent company — had its Q1 earnings call yesterday amid its slowest growth in 3 years. A 17% year-on-year revenue increase has some investors concerned and Google CEO Sundar Pichai had to answer some tough questions about the company's hardware prospects. One analyst even went as far as to compare the Pixel phones with Microsoft's unsuccessful smartphone lineup.
Microsoft's stock price rose this week, briefly seeing the company join the pantheon of trillion-dollar tech giants. MSFT opened at $121.05 Monday morning and peaked at $125.76 Tuesday, nudging the company's valuation over the $1 trillion mark. The price has since fallen.
Read update
- According to a report by Nikkei, Sony is following up this restructuring effort with a series of mass job cuts for those previously in the mobile division. "Up to half" of its smartphone workforce is expected to be cut, which could constitute 2,000 out of a projected total of 4,000 employees at Sony losing their jobs.
Two days ago, Sony revealed a drastic change in its business organization going forward. Sony's Mobile Communications division — responsible for the Xperia line of phones — will be merged with the Imaging Products & Solutions and Home Entertainment & Sound divisions. This "realignment" unifies all of Sony's consumer electronics branches under a single internal division, while conveniently hiding the mobile division's future losses behind a merged balance sheet. That's good for Sony, because according to today's exchange rate, the company has lost over $910 million in the last year making phones.
Most smartphone OEMs have been predicting that the market is set to slow down a bit in 2019, but based on last year's numbers, Xiaomi may end up being an exception. The company saw an astounding 118.1% increase in international revenue, with total revenue increases of 52.6%. That works out to 174.9 billion yuan in revenue, or around 26 billion dollars. When all was said and done, the company made around two billion dollars in gross profit last year.
Twitter is a publicly-traded company, and as such, its quarterly earnings reports always include data about the platform — including the amount of active users. The company has historically never revealed how many active daily users Twitter has, only the amount of users who log in (at least) once a month. In its Q4 earnings report, Twitter has revealed how many people log into the platform daily, among other information.
Google's parent company Alphabet has reported positive financial results for 2018, although stocks in the company still fell 3% in after-hours trading. An operating margin 3% lower than the 24% posted in Q4 2017 and higher expenditure are considered to be reasons for the drop-off, but Alphabet remains profitable.
It's time for full-year 2018 financial results. Samsung has already posted numbers showing less than stellar profits for its mobile division, and now its the turn of South Korea's other tech giant, LG. The story is pretty much unchanged since Q3 results came out — the company is profitable overall, but its mobile division persists in underachieving.