Sony Ericsson reported its third-quarter results on Friday and while several figures suggest the company is on the upswing quarter-over-quarter, its net income and shipments were still down compared to the same quarter in 2010. The company shipped 9.5 million devices during the quarter, up 33% from the 7.6 million it shipped last quarter but down from the 10.4 million it shipped during the third quarter last year. It attributed the decline to fewer feature phone shipments as the company continues to pivot its...

Microsoft released its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday and noted that its revenue of $17.73 billion was greater than any other fourth quarter in the company’s history. The Redmond-based firm also reported $69.94 billion in revenue for the fiscal year — also a record — up 12% from 2010. The company’s Entertainment & Devices division was particularly successful, reporting 30% growth in revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter and 45% for the entire year thanks to Xbox Live, the Xbox ...

According to analyst estimates, Microsoft’s Xbox Live premium gaming service may generate over $1 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ended on June 30th. Much of this revenue is coming from Xbox Live Gold members who pony up cash for additional content like game add-ons, avatars, and movies. Microsoft was uncharacteristically forthcoming about its Xbox Live memberships and confirmed that over half of its Xbox Live members pay for the premium Gold service at an average price tag of $50 per year....

Today, HP announced that it has officially completed the acquisition of Palm. The former Palm business unit will continue with webOS development under the leadership of Jon Rubenstein who will report directly to Todd Bradley, the executive vice president of HP’s Personal Systems Group. Look for the new HP/Palm to further develop its webOS smartphone lineup as well as extend the mobile platform to slate PCs and netbooks. Anyone excited for the future of webOS now that it has some big guns behind it? (mor...

Motorola announced its Q1 2010 earnings and the communications hardware company exceeded analysts expectations. Twenty-Ten started off well for Motorola as the company posted a profit of $69 million or 3 cents per share which contrasts starkly with the $203 million loss or 10 cents per share posted in the same quarter last year. Net sales topped out at $5.04 billion, down 6% from the $5.37 billion posted in Q1 2009. Despite this slight slip, Motorola beat the Street as analysts were expecting 1-2 cents loss o...

Clearwire announced its Q4 2009 and 2009 year end results today, and though WiMAX in the US is lagging behind its European counterparts, it is coming on strong and 2010 promises to be a banner year for the 4G service. Q4 2009 was a strong quarter for Clearwire with the wireless provider adding 85,000 new subscribers in that three month period alone, a single quarter increase that is the largest in company history and greater than its first three 2009 quarters combined. Revenue was also strong in Q4 with Clear...

L.M Ericsson Telephone Company unexpectedly announced on Tuesday that it is laying off almost 1,000 employees in its native Sweden due to a 74% drop in net profits one quarter back. Ericsson is reportedly closing operations in the town of Gävle, a design and manufacturing facility that employs 856 people. They’re also slashing almost 9% of the workforce in the Borås facility, laying off 90 of the 1,037 employees. It is not surprising that much of this loss is attributed to falling sales with  its joi...

A funny thing happened on the way to acquisition. The two largest carriers in the US, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, have commanded and conquered some smaller carriers and are now seemingly sharing the spoils. As already reported, AT&T announced on Friday that it will purchase a substantial portion of Verizon’s divested Alltel assets. On the same day, AT&T also announced that it will be selling certain portions of Centennial communications to Verizon Wireless as AT&T seeks final regulatory a...

Despite solid Q4 2008 earnings, Verizon Wireless is apparently not layoff-proof in this struggling economy but then no company is. Rumor has it that Verizon is in the process of an unannounced work force reduction that began yesterday, February 9th. The rumored layoffs will continue through the end of the month and will affect an unknown number of employees from management level down. As always is the case, low performing employees and those facing disciplinary action are at the highest risk of losing their j...

Bucking the downward trend, Verizon Wireless announced strong Q4 2008 earnings yesterday amidst the downturn. Verizon Wireless saw a net increase of 1.4 million non-acquisition related customers in Q4 2008, most of which were in the retail sector. Verizon added a total of 5.8 million new subscribers in 2008, a 9.9% increase which brings its total subscriber base to 72.1 million. These figures do not include customers added with the Alltel acquisition. Verizon also had a low churn rate with 1.35% churn amongst...

Best Buy reported on Tuesday its earnings for Q3 2008 which, despite a strong Black Friday showing, were abysmal. Best Buy pulled in a meager $52 million in earnings or 13 cents per share which is a 77% drop from the same quarter last year during which Best Buy raked in earnings of $228 million, or 53 cents a share. Best Buy did not even come close to meeting Wall Street’s expected earnings of 24 cents per share which were adjusted downward from Q3 2007 to reflect the slowdown in the economy. As result ...

As has consistently been the case in recent history, Sprint’s Q3 2008 results show a decline in revenue and a loss of customers. Sprint’s overall revenue fell 12% to $8.81 billion from $10.04 billion a year ago. Sprint’s wireless service also showed a similar decline, losing 13% from last year and 3% from last quarter. The decline in revenues was due primarily to a loss of customers as Sprint’s total number of wireless customers declined by 1.3 million during this quarter alone and alm...

RIM announced on Tuesday their new Web Signals technology that lets content providers push relevant and timely alerts directly to your Blackberry. Like SMS alerts on steroids, the new Web Signals will alert Blackberry users of the latest news, weather, sports, entertainment, financial information, etc. You won’t get plain old 160 character text alerts sent out en masse at regular intervals; the new Blackberry alerts will be automatically generated when new content is published and will provide one-click...