Category Archives: Industry News

HTC has posted its quarter one financials and they are better than expected. It seems that flooding the market works quite well because HTC has lacked differentiation for some time now, and those puny external speakers drive me mad! It’s a good place to move forward from though…

HTC’s strong brand recognition and product innovation drive better-than-expected 1Q momentum. Strong underlying growth in all regions overcame traditional seasonality to deliver record high quarterly revenues of NT$104.16bn, net profits of NT$14.83bn, and EPS of NT$18.36.

HTC sold 9.7 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2011, 192% more than the year-ago quarter, and 6% more than 4Q 2010. New products launched in 1Q (Inspire 4G, Thunderbolt, EVO Shift 4G, Desire S, Incredible S) were met with strong customer demand and numerous accolades at the Mobile World Congress and CTIA. This, together with the announcement of innovative products like Wildfire S, ChaCha, Salsa, Flyer, EVO 3D, and Sensation show HTC’s sustained leadership in technology and innovation.

Gross margin for the first quarter was 29.3%. Due to growing operating leverage from scale expansion, operating margin for the first quarter increased to 15.8% from 14.9% in the year-ago quarter.

”Thanks to the hard work of our employees and support from consumers worldwide, we had a phenomenal quarter with record sales and profits. Our innovation and leadership in technology has taken us to new highs. Our brand has been increasingly recognized by customers. And we will continue to focus on delivering the best smartphone products with cutting edge technology, user friendly interface, and premium lifestyle design,” said Peter Chou, HTC’s CEO.

62% of American consumers feel stuck with obsolete smartphones according to a new survey by retrevo. This is hardly surprisingly when you look at the contrast between release schedules and contract terms.

“Manufacturers are flooding the market with new phones at a very fast rate. Retrevo counted more than 120 new smartphones from major vendors over the course of about a year. The problem is that most carriers require you to hold onto a phone for two years before you can upgrade which has created a condition where new phones appear much faster than consumers are allowed to buy them.”

“Experts predict the number of texts sent in the UK will drop by 20 percent in the next two years.”

That is an extract from an article over at IOL which talks about the increase in popularity of IM over SMS. I have to say that I find it highly unlikely that SMS will lose popularity any time soon and full expect it to become even more popular as time goes by. It is the ONLY universal method of mobile communication that everyone uses.

“Leading European telecoms companies want to levy significant charges on Google and other online content providers through an overhaul of the regime governing how data travel over the internet.

Operators in Europe complain that they are contending with an explosion of data on their networks, much of which comes from US sites such as Google’s YouTube video service.”

The above comes from an article in the FT and you would now expect me to have a rant about it. However, I will leave it to Ewan in this post of which the highlight is “Well, no, actually. What we’ll do is this. Anyone requesting Facebook.com from your piddly little operator IP range will get a 500 byte HTML file in return, explaining that the content is unavailable from your bollocks network. That’ll solve your data crunch nightmare overnight, won’t it?”

60 families have been tracked using sensors and software in smartphones to measure their movements, relationships, moods, health, calling habits and spending. It’s clever stuff and well worth checking out at WSJ.

“So far, these studies only scratch the surface of human complexity. Researchers are already exploring ways that the information gleaned from mobile phones can improve public health, urban planning and marketing. At the same time, researchers believe their findings hint at basic rules of human interaction, and that poses new challenges to notions of privacy.”

Hunch has undertaken a huge survey to try to find the differences between Mac and PC users and apparently “Hunch users tend to think debates about operating systems are pointless, but Mac people are more likely to think weighing the merits of Mac vs. PC vs. Linux is important. Meanwhile, 13% of PC users draw a blank if you bring up the operating system debate.”

Personally I’m not convinced there is any difference at all. Just different operating systems- that’s all, nothing deep here.

Well it didn’t take long for Samsung to file a counter-claim against Apple. You can read the full details at Yonhap, but this is a brief summary- “Samsung claimed the Cupertino, California-based company infringed upon 10 patents related to wireless data communications, data transmissions and power controls in its production of the iPhone and the iPad.”

You have probably never heard of Noah Glass. If you use Twitter, however, this interview makes for a fascinating read.

“I’m sure you get this impression from the story and I’ve never really said this before – I did feel betrayed. I felt betrayed by my friends, by my company, by these people around me I trusted and that I had worked hard to create something with.

Afterwards, I was a little shellshocked. I was like, “Wait…what’s the value in building these relationships if this is the result?”

So I spent a lot of time by myself. And working on things alone.

I worked on a game for a while. It didn’t really come out the way I wanted it to.

I moved to Los Angeles to work on something totally different. It was an alternative energy system that I had in mind. I built a prototype for that. It just didn’t function the way I thought it was going to function.”

As we come to expect Apple has beat earnings expectations yet again with the only blips being some supply issues for the iPad and continuing iPod declines. Neither will have a major impact though.

CUPERTINO, California-April 20, 2011-Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 second quarter ended March 26, 2011. The Company posted record second quarter revenue of $24.67 billion and record second quarter net profit of $5.99 billion, or $6.40 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.4 percent compared to 41.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 59 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 3.76 million Macs during the quarter, a 28 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 18.65 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 113 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.02 million iPods during the quarter, representing a 17 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 4.69 million iPads during the quarter.

“With quarterly revenue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95 percent, we’re firing on all cylinders,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We will continue to innovate on all fronts throughout the remainder of the year.”

“We are extremely pleased with our record March quarter revenue and earnings and cash flow from operations of over $6.2 billion,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $23 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $5.03.”

Do you believe that Apple has a valid point in its latest lawsuit against Samsung? The reasons make sense to me- “It’s no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging,” an Apple representative told Mobilized. “This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.”

I don’t believe that Apple will win for many different reasons. Despite the validity of the claim, there are many smartphones and especially tablets that look like Apple products. Using the user interface as a point of contention is also very difficult because it is ultimately Android and Apple is effectively saying that everyone is copying them.

This will likely end up going nowhere and what is to stop HP saying that Apple copied the Palm LifeDrive? Doesn’t Apple and Samsung have quite a big supplier relationship going on as well? They are all suing each other so they may as well call it quits and move on…

Some interesting figures just released by comScore showing that iOS outreaches Android by 59% when tablets, iTouches and phones are all taken into account.

It looks like iOS is doing better overall with Android winning the smartphone race. Thanks to Trevor.

“The research also suggests that iPad ownership extends well beyond Apple’s most fervent consumers. Although a perception may exist that iPad owners tend to be those with a very strong affinity for Apple products, an analysis of the mobile devices of iPad owners indicates that may not be the case. While Apple is indeed the most heavily represented OEM among iPad owners, its OEM share (27.3 percent) is only slightly higher than its share among all smartphone subscribers (25.2 percent). RIM accounts for the second highest percentage of iPad owners at 17.5 percent, but this number is well below its overall smartphone market share of 28.9 percent. Meanwhile, Samsung, LG and Nokia are all significantly overrepresented among iPad owners as compared to their respective shares of the smartphone market. In addition, 14.2 percent of iPad users had Android phones.”