The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘quarter’

The holidays were good to Amazon, which just announced fourth quarter 2009 earnings. Sales were up 42 percent to $9.5 billion in the quarter, and net income shot up 71 percent to $384 million (or 85 cents a share, well above the analyst consensus of 72 cents). Free cash flow was up 113 percent to $2.9 billion. For the full year, sales were $24.5 billion, and net income was $902 million.

Amazon highlighted the success of its Kindle in its earning release, which is not surprising given all the comparison to the iPad which Apple announced yesterday. The one quote from CEO Jeff Bezos in the release is about the Kindle: “Millions of people now own Kindles. And Kindle owners read, a lot. When we have both editions, we sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books. This is year-to-date and includes only paid books — free Kindle books would make the number even higher. It’s been an exciting 27 months.”

Beyond being vague about how many “millions” of people own a Kindle (is it two million or 20 million?), Amazon also mentions that there are now 410,000 books available on the Kindle. The depth and breadth of that catalog is the Kindle’s greatest strength. Amazon also emphasized that its digital books can by synched between its own family of Kindles as well as PCs, “iPhone, iPod touch and soon, Blackberry, Mac and iPad.”

The accounting recognition for the Kindle changed this quarter, with more of the total device price being recognized immediately instead of being deferred. During the conference call there was a mention of $500 million of deferred revenues from shipments from last year which will be apportioned in future quarters. Also asked whether its competitive position has now changed, Amazon emphasized that it will continue to focus on the strength of its existing relationship with publishers and on devices “purpose-built for reading. We believe readers deserve to have a dedicated device with great selection, at a great price.” But other than that would not discuss any competing devices (cough, iPad) or how they might impact the price of the Kindle. Amazon reconfirmed, however, that its Kindle app for the iPhone would be available on the iPad as well

Earnings slides are below:

Request-Webslides_Q409_Final-1 –

So here’s another little DIY project. This one involves making your own little laser light show. Now obviously it’s not going to make shapes in time with Dark Side of the Moon, but it still looks really cool.

More:
DIY: Portable laser light show

In the end, Google and Android will own the smartphone market. It won’t happen this year and it may not even happen in 2012 but the day is coming when the de facto standard for smartphones.

Multiple manufacturers have reported that Android phones are on the way including up to five from Motorola this quarter and a number from Samsung this year. Google also has a number of handsets in for testing and should be rolling them out after the Nexus One.

In the third quarter of 2009, we saw a slight rebound in venture funding from earlier in the year. But which venture capital firms were the most active in the quarter? One of my favorite new tables in our latest TechCrunch Trends report, which is based on company data we collect in CrunchBase, is the ranking of the most active venture capital firms.

We’ve reproduced that ranking below in two interactive tables which show the top 25 most active VC firms in both the third quarter of 2009 and the most active year-to-date. (You can see a list of the top 100 most-active VC firms in the quarter ). The rankings are based on the number of deals each firm participated in during each time period. Draper Fisher Jurvetson tops both lists, with 17 deals in the third quarter, and 34 year to date. Then it was followed, for the quarter, by Sequoia (12 deals), Kleiner Perkins (11 deals), NEA (9 deals), and Benchmark (8 deals). The top ten for the year-to-date rankings show many of the same firms, although they move around a little.

The Q4 numbers are in for Apple and they’re good. Quite good. Really good

See the original post: 
Apple Q4 Results: Another Big Quarter, More Macs And iPhones Sold Than Ever Before

For more TechCrunch Analysis, check out the Q3 09 Trends Report here.

Which venture capitalists had the most exist last quarter? A peek at Crunchbase data shows that Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Foundation Capital and New Enterprise Asosciates all recorded at least three exits by acquisition in Q3 2009.

The four firms were all also among the ten most active investors in CrunchBase in the quarter. Benchmark and Accel were led by partners who had career weeks, Peter Fenton and Jim Breyer. NEA might have posted the best returns, with two huge deals. Foundation, meanwhile, exited two investments that began in the seed/angel rounds.

Today Palm held its conference call for its Q1 FY 2010 results, during which it outlined the performance of its roster of smart phones. It’s a day that has been long awaited by investors, who are eager to see how the company’s flagship Palm Pre has actually been performing. And the results are in, sort of. Across its entire smartphone line Palm shipped 823,000 units this quarter, and its carrier partners “sold through” 810,000, of which the “vast majority” were the Palm Pre (the others were older Treos). In other words, Palm still isn’t talking.

Up until now, Palm has remained mum on the sales of the Pre — its flagship phone that launched with much fanfare earlier this summer, but was quickly overshadowed by the iPhone 3GS launch. That didn’t change today, but we can glean some information from Palm’s statements: the term “vast majority” doesn’t really mean much, but assuming at least 60% of the sell-through figures were from the Pre, that would equate to more than 486,000 units. That’s more than what some have been expecting (a Bloomberg report cited an analyst predicting 400k units sold, while a MarketWatch report put the consensus at about 500K), and Palm’s overall smartphone sales beat analyst expectations.

Still, it’s hard to look back at major Palm investor Roger McNamee’s March, 2009 prediction that the Pre would obliterate the iPhone and think that the Pre’s launch was everything Palm hoped for. Let’s revisit that beautiful quote:

You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.—Roger McNamee

Granted, everyone knew this statement was utterly ridiculous as soon as McNamee uttered it, but the Pre has failed to really reach blockbuster status by even the most generous definition. There’s a reason why Palm is not touting its sales figures the way Apple did when the iPhone 3GS sold 1 million units within five days of its release and 5.2 million in the quarter.

During today’s call Palm stressed that its success isn’t tied to a single device — rather, it’s about Palm’s webOS platform, which is now going to serve as the operating system for every future Palm release. It revealed in the conference call that more carriers are signing up for the Palm. And it will have a second shot at a smash-hit this fall, when it releases its smaller (and cheaper) Pixi in November. And a third shot after that, and then a fourth shot. Maybe one of these days it will get it right.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Microsoft just announced quarterly earnings and they are not pretty. Total revenues are down 17 percent to $13 billion, and net income is down 29 percent to $3 billion. Every business got hit hard, but the worst-performing business by far was the online business. It had the biggest operating loss of $732 million, which was $1 million more than its revenues of $731 million.

That means that every dollar of online revenue was wiped out by a dollar of operating loss. And those operating losses really stack up. For its fiscal year (which ended in June), the online business showed an operating loss of $2.2 billion, nearly twice as much as the year before.

Despite the much-ballyhooed launch of Bing, search revenue was flat in the quarter was flat. You’ve got to wonder how much of the ballooning operating loss is going into Bing, and whether those investments will ever pan out.

The client business (Windows), isn’t doing so hot either. Revenues in the quarter were down 29 percent to $3.1 billion, and it made $1 billion less in operating profit. The Entertainment business (Xbox) saw quarterly revenues decline 25 percent, but managed to reduce operating loses to only $130 million. 1.2 million Xboxes were sold in the quarter, and each Xbox owner has now bought an average of 8.6 games. At least servers and Tools under Bob Muglia seems to be holding up. Its revenues of $3.5 billion were only down by $200 million and its operating profit of $1.3 billion was essentially flat. (Click on segment breakdown below to enlarge).

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

As if the New York Times doesn’t have enough to worry about, with total advertising revenues down 32 percent in the second quarter, its online business is deteriorating as well. In its earnings announcement this morning, the company breaks out Internet advertising revenues of $68 million, which is a 15.5 percent drop from a year ago.

The year-over-year declines keep getting worse, as you can see in the chart above. In the last three quarters the annual decline went from a 3.5 percent drop in the fourth quarter of 2008 to a 6.1 percent decrease in the first quarter of 2009 to negative 15.5 percent this quarter.

Annual Decline In Internet Advertising Revenues

4Q08: -3.5%
1Q09: -6.1%
2Q09: -15.5%

While the $68 million is a fraction of the NYT’s $454 million in total advertising revenues in the quarter (and an even smaller portion of the company’s overall revenues of $702 million, which includes circulation and other sources), the NYT is a bellwether when it comes to media sites on the Web. And if it can’t stem the bleeding on the Web side of its business, other publishers are likely having trouble as well.

There is one glimmer of hope, however. On a sequential basis, compared to last quarter, the NYT’s Internet ad revenues were virtually flat ($68.0 million vs. $67.6 million). And the company as a whole was able to eke out a profit of $21 million, but only because it slashed $132 million worth of costs. And Classified advertsing revenues were down 45 percent. So it is still very much in the woods.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Hello, my name is Christopher Hawker. I am a professional inventor, specializing in innovative consumer products. My company is called Trident Design, LLC. I have developed many products in numerous industries and have over 20 products on the market. My most famous invention is the PowerSquid, a cephalopod-inspired power strip with outlets situated at the end of short cords, thereby eliminating the problem of losing outlets to bulky transformer plugs. John Biggs, editor-in-chief of this blog, has asked me to write the story of the birth of the PowerSquid and its development and journey to market. This is the Song of the PowerSquid.

Part 1: Genesis

This is a story of the birth of a product, a company and a career. It’s an example of how to turn ideas into reality. But, more importantly, it is also a story – albeit a cautionary one – of how to earn a profit from new product ideas, something easier said than done.