Qualcomm on Wednesday reported record earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2012. The company took in $4.68 billion in revenue, up 40% year-over-year and 14% sequentially, beating Wall Street’s estimate of $4.58 million. Qualcomm’s net income of $1.4 billion was up 20% year-over-year and 25% over the fourth quarter. The firm also managed earnings of $0.97 per share, up 18% year-over-year and ahead of the Street’s EPS estimate of $0.90. Qualcomm boosted guidance for the full year, saying ...

Smartphones capable of running on 4G LTE networks will account for between 4% and 5% of all smartphones that ship this year, according to one report. The estimates were published by DigiTimes on Monday, which cited sources at U.S., Korean and Japanese phone manufacturers including Samsung, LG, Pantech, Motorola Mobility and HTC. Android manufacturers are currently ahead of the game when it comes to releasing 4G LTE handsets but, according to DigiTimes, Research In Motion and Apple are expected to release the...

As 2012 approaches, we thought it would be fun to look back on 2011 one last time and share our biggest stories of the year with you. Here they are in order, from our post popular post of the year to our tenth most popular post:Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around himBlackBerry Messenger will launch on Android and iOSSamsung Galaxy Nexus full specs revealed; Verizon Wireless exclusiveBlackBerry Dakota gets pictured; the touch and type BlackBerry you’ve been ...

Samsung hopes to sell 374 million phones next year, up 15% from the 325 million the company expects to have sold in 2011. The South Korea-based firm also said that it plans to sell 150 million smartphones in 2012, Korea Economic Daily said Tuesday. The vendor is well on its way to achieving its 2011 sales goal and announced in December that it had already sold 300 million devices. During the third quarter, Samsung became the top smartphone vendor in the world by shipment volume, surpassing Apple after shipp...

Despite the launch of Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system and the introduction of ultra-thin Intel-powered ultrabooks, Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes thinks the PC industry will see little or no growth in 2012. Reitzes recently said that he expects PC unit growth to hover around just 0.8%, down from his original forecast of 5.1%. He argued that hard drive shortages “could impact some supply” during the first half of next year and that tablets and smartphones will “co...

Asus CEO Jonney Shih said he expects his company to ship between 3 million and 6 million tablets next year, a big leap from the 1.8 million Asus tablets that are expected to ship in 2011. Shih believes his company’s popular Transformer Prime tablet is especially attractive to consumers because, unlike the iPad, it offers a hardware keyboard. A number of Transformer Prime units are plagued with a Wi-Fi signal issue, Taiwan Economic News said, but Asus is offering an exchange program for customers who ...

Susquehanna issued a note to its clients on Wednesday in which the firm said it is increasing its iPhone shipment forecast for Apple’s first fiscal quarter. The company originally expected Apple to ship 27.1 million iPhones during the quarter but has revised that figure up to 30.3 million units. “The revisions are based on positive sell-through data combined with recent supply-chain checks, which suggests that earlier component constraints have largely been resolved and build plans have increased ...

Microsoft said on Wednesday that this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) in Las Vegas will be the last time the company hosts a keynote or has a booth on the show floor. “We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing,” Microsoft corporate ...

Microsoft announced its fiscal first-quarter 2012 earnings on Thursday, the best first quarter the company has ever recorded. The Redmond-based software giant reported revenue of $17.37 billion, up 7% from the first quarter of 2011 and on a par with analyst estimates of $17.26 billion. Operating income for the quarter was $7.2 billion, up 1% from the same quarter last year and net income was $5.74 billion, or $0.68 per share, up 6% from the first quarter of 2011. “We saw customer demand across the bre...

Motorola’s senior vice president of portfolio and product management Alain Mutricy confirmed on Wednesday that the DROID RAZR, announced Tuesday for Verizon Wireless, will receive an Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update early next year. Mutricy explained that the phone was designed to run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), which will be installed when it hits the market, but that Motorola has already created a time frame for an Android 4.0 roll-out, Pocket-lint said. Without support for NFC, however, features ...

The Kindle Fire hasn’t even hit the market yet but the tablet’s successor is already reported to be set for a launch in the second half of next year. Reportedly, Foxconn has secured orders for the device and is working to get the tablet out of the door and onto store shelves during that time period, DigiTimes said on Wednesday. Quanta Computer is building the current generation Kindle Fire, although Amazon is largely believed to already have a second-generation quad-core “Hollywood” ...

Dell and HP will reportedly be among the first manufacturers to launch Windows 8 tablets, and the devices could be on the market as soon as the third quarter of next year, DigiTimes said recently. Supposedly, Amazon’s low-priced Kindle Fire has driven several manufacturers to pursue Windows 8 over Android in an effort to avoid stiff competition in the low-cost tablet market. Lenovo and Dell will stick to creating enterprise-focused tablets according to the report. Dell’s devices will continue to r...

Apple customers are just now getting the iPhone 4S into their hands, however, the company’s highly anticipated (and rumored) iPhone 5 may hit the market sooner than later. According to report from 9to5 Mac, Apple is on schedule to ship the iPhone 5 in the summer of 2012. Why didn’t Apple release it earlier, as rumored? CNET said in a recent story that Steve Jobs was heading up the iPhone 5 project, which was met with delays in February, while the iPhone 4S was developed by another team. The iPhon...

Janney Capital Markets analyst Bill Choi believes Apple’s success with the iPhone will continue to sky rocket. Choi estimated recently that Apple will ship 87 million iPhone units this year and 107 million during 2012, a 27 percent increase year-over-year. Apple’s growing number of carrier partners will be the primary catalyst for the growth, Choi said, noting that 228 wireless carriers offered the iPhone in a total of 105 countries during the third quarter of this year. “There are still a handf...