Despite a series of rapid share declines, Apple in its quarterly results on Tuesday reported a major increase in iPhone sales in the winter. It sold 35.1 million iPhones in the winter, an 88 percent jump from a year ago. The drop was just two million from the fall results and suggested that the traditional post-holiday slump had little impact.Other companies have yet to fully report their data and may stay quiet. Samsung has provided rough guidance for smartphone shipments in the past, but has seldom been specific and hasn't mentioned its figures for early 2012 so far. Strong Galaxy Note sales may have been counterbalanced by an almost year-old Galaxy S II and other phones that had yet to get updates.
Signs of strong Apple sales may have been reflected in AT&T results. Although it sold fewer iPhones than at the end of 2011, the disproportionately high ratio of iPhones to all other devices showed that any decrease was in the market as a whole, not for Apple.
Most of Apple's real challenge may come in mid-year, as the iPhone 4S loses its novelty. The release window for the 2012 iPhone is uncertain and has been unofficially pegged for any time between the summer and October. A summer update would catch users while iPhone 4S demand was still high, while a fall update could see the summer lag as customers start waiting once again.
The results were a minor consolation for relatively soft iPad sales of 11.8 million. While a 151-point increase over winter of 2011, it was less than the 15.4 million of this past fall. The new iPad's launch may have had a similar effect to what the iPhone 4S launch did on Apple's late summer and early fall, where some customers accurately suspected new hardware was coming and held off until it was ready.
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среда, 25. април 2012.
iPhone sales stay high at 35.1m, buck expectations
петак, 13. април 2012.
Google beats expectations, sees profit jump 61%
Google beat expectations for its results on Thursday and simultaneously set out plans to create a new kind of stock to keep its management in place. The company saw its mostly ad-based revenue up 24 percent, to nearly $10.7 billion, and its net profit even higher, up 61 percent to $2.89 billion. While the company didn't delve into specific factors, it was thriving both on its core business and on the "momentum from the big bets" on Android, Chrome, and YouTube, CEO Larry Page said.No updates were given on Android activations, which had previously reached 850,000 per day.
In tandem with the news, the company posted a letter detailing a proposed new class of non-voting stock in the company. Billing it as a form of two-for-one stock split, the move gave each share a matching, non-voting share. The method would let Google more easily offer stock-based compensation but in a way that would minimize the risk of a coup challenging founders Page, Sergey Brin, and executive chairman Eric Schmidt.
If any of these executives wanted to sell any of their own non-voting shares, they would also have to either sell an equal number of their Class B voting shares or convert them into Class A.
Page argued that the non-voting extension was meant to keep Google's founders in charge. In an indirect condemnation of other companies, he noted that he and the other early executives had always been willing to make deep investments with the realization they might only pay off years later. Keeping the same amount of actual share voting power would prevent "short-term pressures," the CEO said, alluding to a tendency of investment groups to only care about quarterly gains and create overly conservative or shortsighted companies as a result.
"We have always managed Google for the long term, investing heavily in the big bets we hope will make a significant difference in the world," he explained. "Some of these bets have been tremendous, funding our activities and generating significant gains for our shareholders. Others have been less successful. But the ability to take these kinds of risks has been crucial to Google
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