Samsung's Galaxy S II hits 5 million sales ahead of U.S. release

By Ricardo Bilton | July 27, 2011, 11:04am PDT

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Samsung’s Galaxy S II has hit another milestone: 5 million sales.

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Okay, we get it, world - you like Galaxy S II. So much so that Samsung has announced today that it has sold 5 million copies of the phone since it was released three months ago. Of course, by “world” I mean nearly every place besides the U.S., where the S II is set to make its appearance at some point next month on one or all of the major carriers.

In any case, Samsung says it plans to sell about five million more of the Galaxy S II, so there’s still plenty of work to do. And then there’s also that little matter of the iPhone 5 eventually making its appearance.

[YonYap News]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/samsungs-galaxy-s-ii-hits-5-million-sales-ahead-of-us-release/26573?alertspromo=&tag=nl.rSINGLE

Research in Motion lays off 2,000 workers, still needs a hit device

By Larry Dignan | July 25, 2011, 5:13am PDT

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Research in Motion will lay off 2,000 employees as it struggles to navigate a void in its product line-up as well as lower-than-expected sales.

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Research in Motion said Monday it will lay off 2,000 employees as it struggles to navigate a void in its product line-up as well as lower-than-expected sales.

When the layoffs are complete, RIM will have about 17,000 employees globally. The company said that it will take a charge in its fiscal second quarter and exact figures will be disclosed when RIM reports earning Sept. 15.

Along with the layoffs, RIM is shuffling its executive suite. First, Don Morrison, RIM’s chief operating officer who is currently on medical leave, will retire. Thorsten Heins will become chief operating officer for product and sales. In a nutshell, all product engineering—hardware and software—will be consolidated under Thorsten.

Patrick Spence will become managing director of global sales and regional marketing. Spence will report to Heins.

Among other key management roles at RIM:

• Robin Bienfait will become responsible to RIM’s enterprise unit. She is already RIM’s CIO focused on BlackBerry operations, customer service and corporate IT.
• David Yach, CTO of software, will focus on RIM’s developer relations and application ecosystem.
• Jim Rowan will be chief operating officer of operations and focus on manufacturing, supply chain and repair. Rowan and CFO Brian Bidulka will oversee RIM’s current cost cutting efforts.

Overall, these moves are designed to help RIM “create greater alignment of the organization” and “streamline operations to better position the company for future growth and profitability.” However, RIM needs to get on the board with new products more than anything. RIM needs a hit device more than cost cutting moves.

RIM co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis took some heat from shareholders earlier this month at the company’s annual meeting. The co-CEOs talked up RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry OS 7.0 devices and the company’s next big product launches. The problem is that these devices are the warm-up act for so-called superphones powered by the QNX operating system.

Some analysts are questioning the leadership of Balsillie and Lazaridis and have noted that RIM has missed key inflection points in the smartphone industry. Specifically, RIM has wrestled with the software integration with its hardware. In the meantime, RIM’s market share in the smartphone industry continues to erode.

Today’s cost-cutting efforts are designed to help RIM hold the fort until its new products juice growth. At least that’s the plan of Balsillie and Lazaridis.

RIM has made a series of acquisitions to better compete on the software front. For instance, RIM acquired JayCut last week. And last year RIM acquired The Astonishing Tribe, a user interface optimization firm. Before that purchase RIM bought Torch Mobile and QNX. Add it up and RIM is serious about software, but it’s unclear whether the company can master hardware, software and the necessary integration in between. Balsillie has argued that the next wave of RIM products will set the company up for the next decade, but skeptics abound.

Related:

Vultures circle RIM management: BlackBerry 7 devices as savior?

• BlackBerry PlayBook vs. HP TouchPad: A tale of two failures
• RIM confirms new BlackBerry Bold 9900 “will be available this summer”
• Apple’s iOS zips past RIM as Blackberry product vacuum continues
• AT&T finally approves BlackBerry Bridge app, slaps on $20/month for tethering
• AT&T releases BlackBerry Bridge for the PlayBook over 2 months after release
• Alas, poor RIM and BlackBerry, we knew them well
• RIM’s conundrum: Convincing you to buy a BlackBerry 7.0 device?

CNET: RIM, the picture of a top-heavy company

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/research-in-motion-lays-off-2000-workers-still-needs-a-hit-device/53076?tag=nl.e539

AT&T's Q2: 3.6 million iPhone activations; Android diversification effort underway

By Larry Dignan | July 21, 2011, 4:45am PDT

Summary

AT&T’s smartphone diversification effort appears to be paying off as the company added 331,000 net postpaid subscribers, activated 3.6 million iPhones and doubled Android device sales from a year ago.

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AT&T’s smartphone diversification effort appears to be paying off as the company added 331,000 net postpaid subscribers, activated 3.6 million iPhones and doubled Android device sales from a year ago.

The telecom giant reported second quarter earnings of $3.6 billion, or 60 cents a share, on revenue of $31.5 billion, up 2.2 percent from a year ago. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 59 cents a share. AT&T’s earnings were down from $4 billion, or 67 cents a share, in the second quarter a year ago.

Going into the earnings report, most analysts were focused on AT&T’s postpaid additions. On that front, AT&T had a respectable showing. The company added 1.1 million total wireless subscribers to reach the 98.6 million mark. Of that sum, AT&T added 331,000 postpaid additions. Excluding migrations of Alltel and Centennial, AT&T said net postpaid adds would have been 504,000. Barclays Capital analyst James Ratcliffe was expecting 200,000 postpaid subscriber additions and Morgan Stanley’s Simon Flannery was looking for 130,000.

Analysts are also going to focus on the T-Mobile purchase given that opposition is starting to emerge. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), who heads up the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, asked regulators to shoot down the deal.

The company, which indicated that its acquisition of T-Mobile was on track, said that it added 137,000 prepaid subscribers and 379,000 connected devices such as the Kindle and iPad. Overall, AT&T said the results indicate broad adoption of smartphones.

Indeed, smartphones were nearly 70 percent of AT&T’s postpaid sales. The company said it sold 5.6 million smartphones, up 43 percent from a year ago. Of those smartphone sales, Android and other devices were 40 percent of the mix.

AT&T didn’t offer a breakdown between the non-iPhone devices. Other devices include BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone 7 smartphones.

By the numbers:

• Half of AT&T’s 68.4 million postpaid subscribers had smartphones up from 35.8 percent a year ago. Of those smartphones subscribers, 85 percent have FamilyTalk or business plans.
• Total wireless revenue for the second quarter was $15.6 billion. Data revenue was up 23.4 percent from a year ago to $5.4 billion.
• AT&T said total churn for the second quarter was 1.43 percent, up from 1.29 percent a year ago. Postpaid churn was 1.15 percent, up from 1.01 percent a year ago. That churn rate is stable, but does indicate AT&T is losing a few customers.
• Wireline revenue for the second quarter was $5.4 billion, up slightly from a year ago. AT&T added 202,000 U-verse TV customers and now has 3.4 million subscribers. Most of those customers have U-Verse Internet access too. Overall, AT&T added 439,000 U-Verse broadband subscribers in the second quarter.
• The company’s business revenue remains a challenge. Second quarter revenue was $9.3 billion, down 4.1 percent from a year ago. AT&T is losing out in its traditional voice and data accounts and trying to offset those losses with services such VPNs, hosting, IP conferencing and application services.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/at-ts-q2-36-million-iphone-activations-android-diversification-effort-underway/52925

Nokia: Net sales down, operating profits down

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | July 21, 2011, 4:04am PDT

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Nokia has released the Q2 2011 interim report and there’s a lot of red ink on it.

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Nokia has released the Q2 2011 interim report and there’s a lot of red ink on it.

Here are the highlights (if you can call them that):

• Net sales down 7% year-on-year, down 11% quarter-on-quarter
• Operating profits down 41% year-on-year, down 44% quarter-on-quarter
• Net sales down 20% year-on-year, down 23% quarter-on-quarter
• Smart devices (smartphones) down 32% year-on-year, down 33% quarter-on-quarter
• 16.7 million smartphones sold, down 34% year-on-year, down 31% quarter-on-quarter (this puts Nokia third in terms of sales, behind Apple and Samsung)
• ‘Dumb’ cellphone sales down 20% year-on-year, down 25% quarter-on-quarter
• Nokia’s Devices and Services division operating profits down 43% year-on-year, down 47% quarter-on-quarter
• The only real glimmer of hope in the data was the operating profits for Nokia’s NAVTEQ mapping division, up 6% 43% year-on-year, but down 2% quarter-on-quarter and net sales for Nokia Siemens Networks (acquired Motorola Solutions networks assets), up 20% year-on-year, up 15% quarter-on-quarter, with operating profits down 22% year-on-year, but up a whopping 1233% quarter-on-quarter

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop called the results ‘disappointing’ but added that things were going well with regards to ‘initiatives that are most important to [Nokia's] longer term competitiveness’ and that ‘progress is already evident’ which means that he expects Nokia to end the year with more net cash and liquid assets than at the end of Q2 2011.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/nokia-net-sales-down-operating-profits-down/13848