However Apple might try to spin the numbers, focusing on profits and margins rather than actual sales, there’s no denying Fitbit continues to reign over the fledgling, slowly growing wearable market with an increasingly diverse portfolio of ...
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You have to hand it to HTC, as no matter how tough the going gets, its optimism appears to remain intact. Similarly, the company isn’t afraid to make bold bets on redesigned flagship phones and unripe technologies, even after four consecutive quarters of massive operating loss.Granted, the manufacturers of the “critically acclaimed” Vive VR headset, ...
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$5.7 billion last quarter, $6.8 billion this quarter?Banks are betting on what Samsung has made in operating profit from April on, the first full quarter where the Galaxy S7 has been a factor. It made $42.5 billion in sales last quarter, but with healthy consumer take-up in the new smartphones, that number ...
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Until now, there were only assumptions and educated guesses drafted by financial analysts. But today, we have Samsung’s formal earnings guidance for Q2 2016, which is even more optimistic than third-party expectations.It appears the Galaxy S7 already sold 26 million copies, up a cool mil from previous projections, driving revenue and especially profits through the roof. Launched towards the end of the year’s first ...
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Not to be outdone by domestic arch-rival Samsung, home appliance, HD TV and mobile phone giant LG is also ready today to forecast strong overall financial performance for the recently concluded April – June 2016 quarter.Unlike the world’s most popular Android device manufacturer however, the company behind the ingenious G5 looks resigned to
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In addition to widening the subscriber count gap between the nation’s third and fourth largest wireless communications service providers, T-Mobile continues to close in on “Dumb and Dumber”, which is how its CEO likes to refer to the market’s overall leader and silver medalist.Of course, even 13 consecutive quarters of over 1 million customer gains aren’t enough for the “Uncarrier” to actually breathe down Verizon and AT&T’s necks. Big Red still dominates the charts, with 113.2 mil “retail connections”
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America’s number one wireless communications service provider is definitely feeling the squeeze of a silver medalist that continues to breathe down its neck, a most-improved third-placed player, and a slowly recovering fourth.
But it will still take years to find out if Verizon’s new advertising strategy and costly AOL and Yahoo acquisitions pay off, according to financial analysts, which is why Big Red needs to focus in the short term on a return to profit growth.
The Q3 (or 3Q) 2016 results aren’t terrible, though they’re obviously not great, despite VZW’s “continued strong profitability” spin. Yes, earnings per share narrowly exceeded estimates for the July – September timeframe, at $1.01, but total operating revenues fell 6.7 percent year-on-year, to $30.9 billion.
Meanwhile, there were 442,000 retail postpaid net additions during 2016’s third quarter, a decent score offset by a loss of 36,000 in net phone additions. The latter part was due to a massive decline in basic and 3G handheld usage, which 357,000 newly activated 4G LTE smartphones couldn’t cover for.
Verizon’s increase in retail connections was also fairly modest, of 2.6 percent, to a grand total of 113.7 million, with device payment plans proving more and more popular, at 70 percent of all new activations, up from 67 the previous quarter.
It still remains to be seen if a Yahoo renegotiation is in order, as evaluation of the recently disclosed hack attack’s material impact on the Sunnyvale business is “going to be a long process”, according to CFO Fran Shammo.
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The past few weeks have been all about damage control for Samsung in the wake of the shocking Galaxy Note 7 double recall, and now it’s time for a quick damage check. An official, final and painful Q3 2016 audit, previewed not long ago, but still decidedly uncomfortable to see confirmed for devoted fans of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer.
Gone are the days of record-breaking financial growth across the board, although a couple of divisions did manage to boost their operating profit both sequentially and annually. Even the mobile business reported a microscopic quarterly net gain of 0.1 trillion won, which is however massively down from the Q3 2015 score of KRW 2.4tn and Q2 2016’s 4.32 trillion won surplus tally.
The 100 billion won ($87.8 million) is in fact the worst profit result of Samsung’s IM, aka mobile, department in almost eight years, while the overall 5.2 trillion won ($4.5 billion) marks a 30 percent annual decline, as well as the lowest total profit score since Q3 2014.
Consolidates sales didn’t do much better between July and September 2016, dropping 7.5 percent compared to the same period last year, from KRW 51.68 trillion to 47.82tn. But it’s not all doom and gloom for a company now focused entirely on “regaining consumers’ confidence”, as Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge demand remains “solid”, with “steady” mid-tier growth achieved by Galaxy A and J-series devices.
Up next, the aim is to “normalize” the mobile business, and expand sales of “new flagship products with differentiated design and innovative features.” Can you say “full-screen” Galaxy S8?
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It’s pretty hard to contest Apple and especially Samsung had a poor July – September quarter showing as far as both sales and profits were concerned, but it’s important to remember these two are still market leaders and money-making machines.
The reason it’s disappointing to see one “only” post $46.85 billion gross revenues, while the other reports $4.5 billion operating margin is the crazy high standard typically required of them, based of course on their recent history.
At the same time, LG Electronics, which is another esteemed though clearly not as successful tech giant, would probably be happy to break even in the increasingly competitive mobile arena. Instead, “weak G5 sales” and “expenses associated with business improvement activities” saw the chaebol’s smartphone division yield its sixth consecutive quarterly loss, and the worst ever. Yes, ever.
Namely, Q3 2016 departmental expenses exceeded returns by no less than 436.4 billion won (roughly $385 million), with 2.52 trillion won in revenues, down 24 percent sequentially, and just 13.5 million unit shipments, representing a 9 percent year-on-year and 3 percent quarter-on-quarter decline.
Ironically, LG continues to raise its profile in the North American smartphone landscape, boosting regional shipments by 14 percent over Q2, while losing precious domestic ground (41 percent sequentially).
At the end of the day, strong home entertainment and home appliance sales were once again enough to offset mobile deficits, generating a modest overall $248 million profit. But is LG still going to tolerate that dynamic if the V20 follows the G5 on the flop train? For the sake of competition, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Source: LG
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Despite a reported annual growth of 7.5 percent, the global smartphone market arguably went through one of its toughest quarters yet between July and September 2016. At the top of the manufacturer ranks, both Samsung and Apple lost precious share, while the further consolidated OS duopoly looks on the verge of turning into a dangerous monopoly.
But that’s strictly speaking from a sales volume standpoint, because iPhones somehow yielded 103.6 percent of the industry’s Q3 profits, considerably up from an already impressive 90 percent or so during the same period of last year.
How is it even mathematically possible for a single device vendor to rack up all of such a seemingly lucrative and competitive market’s financial gains, and then some? It’s simple: almost no one else in the business made any money at the end of the day, with LG and HTC singled out as the quarter’s biggest, highest-profile losers.
Samsung, meanwhile, was both a profit and shipment winner, though its piece of the worldwide earnings pie shrunk from 11 percent in Q3 2015 and 14 for the whole year to under 1 percent now. 0.9, to be exact, as Galaxy Note 7 damage control strategies mostly failed. No words on Huawei’s performance in recent BMO Capital Markets analysis, with the rising star’s ambitions still focused mainly on sales numbers.
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The Android smartphone market needs another hero after Samsung’s abrupt fall from grace this past quarter, with three Chinese OEMs actually rising to the challenge and splitting Apple’s scraps, according to fresh Strategy Analytics research.
This particular consulting firm estimates iPhones captured a record 91 percent share of $9.4 billion total worldwide industry profits, which makes a little more sense than mind-boggling numbers previously thrown around by BMO Capital Markets analysts.
Either way, Cupertino still has no rival to first place in global profitability ranks, especially now that Huawei, Vivo and OPPO are essentially tied in second, third and fourth positions, with Samsung falling to the “Others” category.
And sure, a 2.4 percent slice of the operating profit pie, equating to roughly $200 million, doesn’t sound impressive for the world’s third largest smartphone vendor when Apple scored mobile gains of $8.5 billion between July and September 2016.
Then again, Huawei’s $200 million quarterly surplus is practically a match for the combined tally of all the “other” OEMs, including Samsung. Vivo and OPPO continue to make waves with “disciplined pricing and soaring shipments across Asia”, themselves breaking away from the losing pack, at $200M profits each.
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It’s always risky to try to forecast the long-term box-office results of a smartphone manufacturer or even a single product, but with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 out of the picture, iPhone popularity on a small decline, and Chinese OEMs still struggling stateside, Morgan Stanley feels safe anticipating solid Google Pixel scores.
By Nexus standards, at least, because compared to the iPhone 7 or Galaxy S7, the 3 million units the financial corporation expects Big G to sell this year, as well as 5 to 6 mil in 2017, are far from great.
What Morgan Stanley focuses on is the revenue likely to be generated directly by Pixel and Pixel XL shipments, namely around $2 billion in the latter stages of 2016, plus $3.8 billion throughout next year. Once again, that’s a mere drop in Apple or Samsung’s high-end device earnings oceans, but it might propel Google among the world’s most profitable mobile hardware makers. If you ignore the fact the Android 7.1 powerhouses are actually produced by HTC.
Either way, the Mountain View-based search giant is looking at decent profits here, charging $649 for an entry-level Pixel that commands a $241 bill of materials and roughly $230 in “other COGS” (cost of goods sold), including depreciation & amortization, royalties and warranty expenses.
“Android user monetization” should also help Google make money long after Pixels leave its warehouses, through app and accessory purchases, Android Pay transactions, and pricier ads pushed to the ecosystem’s biggest spenders.
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Was Samsung 2016’s biggest tech loser? Maybe in the eyes of certain market analysts, pundits and editorialists, as various surveys actually suggested little brand trust impact, even in the short term, caused by the highly publicized Galaxy Note 7 QA fiasco, while the company’s financials appear to have swiftly rebounded.
The final Q4 2016 results are obviously not in yet, and the chaebol’s previous quarterly earnings guidance turned out to be way off the mark, but there’s no conceivable reason to doubt the general accuracy of newly released predictions.
As such, believe it or not, Samsung is looking at a three-year high consolidated operating profit of around 9.2 trillion Korean won ($7.7 billion), substantially up from both Note 7-influenced Q3 scores of 5.2 trillion won, and a 6.14 trillion won tally back in Q4 2015 that wasn’t bogged down by scandalous recalls.
Where is all this profit coming from, without a fancy new S Pen phablet hero to sell like hotcakes, and various damage control measures still costing a pretty penny? Well, technically, Samsung already wrote off the bulk of the ill-fated phone’s direct and indirect losses, with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge presumably back not just in the spotlight, but on many people’s holiday shopping lists.
Then you have memory chips, OLED screens and stuff like that which probably surpassed expectations, with the company’s semiconductor division singled out as the quarter’s top performer by most analysts. And yes, Q4 sales were of course on a sequential rise, from roughly 48 trillion won in Q3 to approximately 53 trillion between October and December 2016, which is however an exact match for Q4 2015 figures.
In total, Samsung projects 2016 consolidated sales to reach 201.54 trillion Korean won, with a full-year profit of a little over 29 trillion, up from 200.65 and 26.41 trillion respectively in 2015.
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Memory chips, displays, as well as low and high-end smartphones, have helped Samsung not just neutralize Note 7 losses, but post healthy Q4 2016 profits.
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LG is quick to single out the very weak-selling G5 as the culprit of the company's big overall Q4 financial losses, but that's not entirely fair.
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Not only are Sony smartphones unprofitable or barely profitable these days, also selling in negligible numbers worldwide quarter after quarter.
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2016 may not have been such a perfect year for Huawei, which indeed sold a boatload of smartphones, failing to generate satisfying profit however.
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The Apple Watch Series 2 helped Infinite Loop pad its holiday earnings, but it cost its touch panel maker the year in profits. Who's to blame?
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Apple undisputably owns the profits crown in the smartphone industry with more than 100 percent share in some quarters. But this is a marked decrease.
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Even with the Galaxy Note 7 out of the picture, the Galaxy S8 not yet released and the S7 getting a bit long in the tooth, Samsung made a boatload of money.
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