Apple has argued on multiple occasions that Samsung builds mobile products that ”blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success.” Courts seem to disagree for the most part, with only a pair of injunctions having been issued despite dozens of complaints Apple has filed around the world. There are some areas where Samsung does seem to take pages out of Apple’s playbook, however — Samsung’s new anti-iPhone ad strategy is somewhat reminiscent o...

Verizon Communications on Friday reported earnings for the third quarter of 2011. Total consolidated operating revenue came in at $27.91 billion, up 5.4% over the third quarter last year and narrowly beating the Street’s $27.88 billion estimate. The carrier reported non-GAAP earnings of $0.56 per share, up from $0.55 in the third quarter of 2010. Verizon’s wireless business recorded revenue of $15 billion in the quarter, up 6.1% from the same quarter last year, and wireless connections now total ...

Nokia on Thursday posted better-than-expected results for the third quarter thanks to mobile device shipments that exceeded analysts’ expectations by a substantial margin. The Finnish phone vendor shipped 89.9 million feature phones, crushing expectations which were as low as 67 million units for the quarter, and revenue from its mobile devices group came in at €5.39 billion compared to the Street’s consensus of €5.06 billion. Total revenue fell 13% from the third quarter last year to €8....

Apple is looking at another big-margin device launch next week when the tech giant’s fifth-generation iPhone finally hits store shelves on October 14th. Market research and intelligence firm UBM TechInsights on Wednesday estimated that Apple’s 32GB iPhone 4S carries a materials cost of $203 per handset for the Cupertino-based company. UBM arrived at that number by using component costs from its iPhone 4 teardown as a base and then making slight adjustments for known changes in iPhone 4S components...

Amazon will reportedly turn a profit of approximately $49 for each Kindle Fire it sells following the device’s launch next month. Earlier rumors painted a very different picture of Amazon’s strategy with its first media tablet, suggesting the retailer would be selling the slates at a loss of between $10 and $50 per device. The theory, these reports claimed, was that Amazon hoped to make up the difference and then some thanks to deep integration with paid Amazon services such as Amazon Video On Dem...

Samsung on Friday reported earnings for the second quarter of 2011 that showed a significant decline in profit despite modest revenue gains. Samsung’s revenue ticked up 4% year-over year to 39.44 trillion Korean won but its consolidated net income of 3.51 trillion won was a sharp 18% decline from the same quarter in 2010. The company’s semiconductor business recorded revenues of 1.79 trillion won in the second quarter, which was up sequentially from the 1.64 billion won but down from 2.94 billion ...

Following first-quarter earnings that sent investors and the media into a tizzy, analyst coverage of RIM has been fairly monotone. The consensus? The company is doomed. Sure, there’s been an odd half-hearted vote of confidence here and there, but the majority of analyst coverage we’ve seen has been negative and investors are exiting en masse. In a 45-page report published last Tuesday, however, analysts at Macquarie Capital Markets paint a different picture of RIM’s business. Despite produ...

Research In Motion on Thursday reported earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2012. After cutting its first-quarter outlook at the end of April, RIM’s May quarter came in below analyst estimates. First quarter revenue came in at $4.9 billion versus the Street’s estimate of $5.5 billion, and device shipments totalled 13.2 million versus expectations of 13.5 million. Net income for the quarter was $695 million, down from $769 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Earnings per share in the f...

Sony Chief Financial Officer Masaru Kato announced to the press on Monday that the company expects to post an annual loss of $3.2 billion for its fiscal year ending in March 2011 — the second largest loss in company history. The news comes as yet another blow for the Japanese consumer electronics giant, whose online networks have been the target of a series of cyberattacks that impacted more than 100 million customers. Sony had previously expected to post a profit this year, however the company had to writ...

Apple on Wednesday reported earnings for the second quarter of fiscal 2011. Reports from Tuesday suggesting Apple might miss iPad sales estimates were accurate as Apple reported second-quarter sales of only 4.69 units compared to 7.33 million iPads last quarter. Analyst estimates fell between 6 and 8 million iPads for the March quarter. Apple’s iPhone sold 18.65 million units globally in the second quarter compared to 8.75 million units in the same quarter last year and 16.24 million units in the first ...

Internet juggernaut Google has released its financial results from the first-quarter of 2011, and things are looking pretty good. The company posted revenues of $8.58 billion during the quarter — which represents a 27% increase year-over-year — with $5.88 billion of that figure being generated by Google-owned websites. The company failed to meet Wall Street’s earning expectations, however, coming in $0.03 shy of the predicted $8.11 earnings per share. “These results demonstrate the value of search...

It appears as though Acer founder Stan Shih will get his wish, as news of CEO Gianfranco Lanci’s resignation could mark the start of a much needed overhaul. Shih, who retired from the company in 2004, said on Tuesday that Acer is in need of an overhaul and a shift in focus from being a leader in the PC market to increasing profit margins. On Thursday, Acer announced that Lanci is resigning effective immediately, and company chairman J. T. Wang will step in as interim CEO until the company finds a suita...

It’s a recession people, and in a recession the name of the game is to keep sales as steady as possible while reducing costs as much as possible. For countless companies this means unloading employees but as RIM’s market share continues to surge, the Canadian handset maker is taking a different approach; use its solid sales to squeeze better prices out of its suppliers. Based on iSuppli’s estimates, BlackBerrys do have a fairly substantial cost to RIM with the Bold running the company approx...

BusinessWeek has managed to get its hands on a teardown of the BlackBerry Bold and it looks like RIM has yet another reason to be upset about the ever-delayed AT&T release: huge margins. While the Bold is currently available in many markets around the world, RIM’s largest market, the US, is still in limbo. New information suggests that said delays may be costing RIM more money than we think. Self-proclaimed market intelligence firm iSuppli is known for pretty spot-on teardown analyses and after pick...