Earnings

Apple Q3 2013 earnings: 31.2M iPhones, 14.6M iPads, $35.3B revenue

Facing increasing competition from Samsung and other vendors, without a new product in several months, most analysts predicted that Apple's earnings for the June quarter would be somewhat of a disappointment. But Apple just beat most of the Street's estimates.

Apple's earnings are out, and for the most part the numbers are impressive. The company managed to sell 31.2 million iPhones during the 3-month period, where most analysts predicted 26 million. And it also sold 14.6M iPads (very low), and posted $35.3B in revenue...

AT&T activates 3.7 million iPhones in Q2

As we sit and wait for Apple to release its earnings report for the June quarter, let's take a look at how AT&T did. The nation's second largest carrier has had an interesting 3-months, having to deal with increased competition from the scrappy T-Mobile.

The company just released its Q2 financials, and most of the numbers look good thus far. The carrier says it added 551,000 postpaid subscribers from March to June, helping it fuel earnings of 67 cents per share and post a solid revenue of $32 billion...

Welcome to the post-PC world, Microsoft: $900M in unsold Surface RT inventory

Microsoft last June unveiled its iPad contender, the ARM-powered Surface RT tablet. We've suspected all along that it hasn't been much of a smash hit.

Nine months later, the Windows giant admits defeat by announcing it will be taking an astounding $900 million loss over unsold Surface RT inventory.

The top dogs called it an “inventory adjustments”. Our take: these things would not have been collecting dust in the warehouse if they were flying off the shelves like hotcakes...

Verizon activates 3.9M iPhones in Q2 2013

Despite concerns about a shrinking pool of U.S. cell phone owners who have yet to upgrade to smartphones, Verizon Wireless announced it activated 3.9 million iPhones during the second quarter, an increase of 44 percent surpassing analyst forecasts of 3.5 million iPhone subscribers.

In other words, of the 7.5 million smartphones Verizon activated in the June quarter, over 50 percent were iPhones. Smartphones now account for more than half of Verizon Wireless customers, rising to 64 percent from a previous 50 percent, according to the official earnings results the carrier posted Thursday...

All-time iPhone sales are about to surpass all-time iPod sales

The iPhone, Apple's wildly successful smartphone, is coming up on a significant milestone. The handset is about to pass another one of the Cupertino company's wildly successful products, the iPod MP3 player, in all-time sales.

The achievement was noted on Twitter this morning by Ender's analyst Benedict Evans, who pointed out that with cumulative iPhone sales at 356 million units and lifetime iPod sales at 375 million, it should happen this quarter...

Tasting Apple’s bitter pill: Samsung’s smartphone growth story running its course

In an age of demand for simple, inexpensive smartphones, big is not always better. The latest example is Samsung, viewed until recently as the Asian Apple, it's Galaxy smartphones keeping Android from sinking into mediocrity. After snickering at the iPhone maker's spate of bad luck on Wall Street, Samsung Friday lost 3.6 percent of its stock value amid a disappointing quarterly forecast.

With 70 percent of its profits coming from mobile devices, Samsung is in the same leaky boat as Apple. Addicted to high profits from sales of expensive smartphones built cheaply, Samsung Friday forecast $8.3 billion in profit during the second quarter, lower than the $8.9 billion Wall Street expected.

Since early June, the South Korean firm's stock value has lost $34.2 billion, the market capital of Sony and LG combined, according to one report...

T-Mobile announces 500,000 iPhones sold in first month

T-Mobile released its earnings report for its first quarter late last night, and the numbers aren't looking too good. The carrier saw a 7% dip in its revenue from the same three month period last year, as well as a 7.5% drop in profits.

But it wasn't all bad news. T-Mobile's newly-acquired iPhone handsets seem to be doing very well, with the company reporting that it has sold more than 500,000 of them since they officially went on sale last month (the 12th)...

Sprint activates 1.5M iPhones in Q1, 43 percent to new customers

Sprint Nextel, the nation's third-largest wireless carrier, Wednesday posted its fiscal 2013 first quarter earnings. The telco saw strong smartphone sales of five million units, with iPhone sales exceeding 1.5 million with 43 percent to new customers.

A whooping 86 percent of quarterly Sprint platform postpaid handset sales were smartphones. Sprint described the 43 percent of iPhone sales that were to new customers as a rate "that continues to outperform larger competitors"...

Tim Cook talks new product categories, downplays chances of larger iPhone

Apple's Q2 earnings conference call just ended, and by most counts it went rather well. The company beat Wall Street estimates for iPhone and iPad sales, and revenue, and announced a huge initiative to return $100 billion back to investors by 2015.

So why has Apple's stock fallen from its huge after-hours spike back down to where it started? Well, it might have something to do with Tim Cook's comments on Apple's product pipeline. The CEO indicated that we won't see any new stuff until the fall...

Apple Q2 2013 earnings: 37.4M iPhones, 19.5M iPads, $43.6B revenue

The news headlines for Apple have been getting progressively worse over the past few months, as rumors continue to swell of falling iPhone and iPad demand, and the company's stock dipping below $400 for the first time since 2011.

But it looks like they might be able to change the conversation. Q2 numbers are out, and Apple beat Wall Street projections in nearly every category, selling 37.4 million iPhones, 19.5 million iPads and producing $43.6 billion in revenue...

AT&T activates 4.8M iPhones in Q1

Just as we're counting down the remaining time until Apple's earnings release, the company's trusted iPhone distributor AT&T reported corporate earnings related to the first three months of this year. The company added 1.2 million new subscribers and sold six million smartphones, of which 4.8 million were iPhones, accounting for a whopping 80 percent of new smartphone additions.

By contrast, rival Verizon last week said it added 677,000 net new subscribers during the first quarter. Additionally, out of the 7.2 million new smartphone owners in the quarter, Verizon reported that four million were iPhones.

Even with the slowing growth slowed, key metrics matched Wall Street expectations. That wasn't enough to prevent shares from going down by nearly 1.25 percent in after hours trading. We'll be listening to AT&T's conference call later this afternoon for additional data points...

Are Apple earnings a candle in the wind?

Apple, which for years has acted as an engine for much of the tech industry, may report slowing profits for the first time in a decade. Talk of a slowdown comes as the consumer tech giant deals with the triple-threat of slimmer profit margins, falling iPhone demand and heightened competition. Ahead of Tuesday's second-quarter earnings report, Wall Street has entered a "show-me mode" as investors look for reassurance the firm can promise a rosier future...