Mark Bridge writes:
I didn’t study economics at college, which is probably one of the reasons I have a very simple perspective on quarterly results. As far as I’m concerned, they fall into one of three categories: much as expected, better than expected or worse than expected. Anyway, it’s the time of year when some of the biggest names in the mobile telecoms industry publish their financial results – so here we go.
Microsoft’s figures seemed pretty stable to me – revenue up a bit, profit down a bit – although there wasn’t much mention of mobile. Make of that what you will. Google’s also earning loads of money, despite its Motorola mobile business showing an operating loss in the quarter.
Samsung’s quarterly revenue and profit were both up… but the company warned that business may be slowing down a bit. Hardly surprising, I’d say. Apple’s profit figure was largely unchanged year-on-year, which might seem disappointing until you realise it’s $13.1 billion. Poor old Apple, eh?
Nokia headed back into quarterly profit for the first time in over a year. No party yet, though. And Chinese telecoms giant Huawei anticipated a 33% profit increase in its 2012 financial results, while rival ZTE warned of a loss.
After the financial results come the analysts. ABI Research, the International Data Corporation, Juniper Research and Strategy Analytics have each published estimates for mobile phone sales in 2012. All are different, although there’s no doubt that smartphones are taking over and Samsung’s had an especially good year.
Alongside all these facts and opinions, we’ve had some new products and services turning up as well. UK retailer Phones 4u is planning its own virtual mobile network (but don’t mention upgrades, please), Twitter has launched a service for sharing short video clips and the Mozilla Foundation has announced two new smartphones that’ll run the Firefox OS mobile operating system.
On top of all this, we’ve got RIM preparing for the launch of BlackBerry 10 on Wednesday. Which, much like financial results, will be much as expected, better than expected or worse than expected. We’ll let you know.
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