Sprint's Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse wished long and hard for an opportunity to carry Apple's iPhone, but what he and his company never considered was the old adage that says 'Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it and then you're stuck with high iPhone subsidies.' We added that last part, but to be fair, does it matter? Sprint, like Verizon, was hellbent on carrying the iPhone, and now it's seeing the cost of that decision.
Sony's newly annointed CEO and President Kazuo Hirai has a monumental task in front of him. He inherited a company that's coping with weak TV sales, disruptions in the electronics market due to the severe flooding in Thailand, and a strong yen, all of which came together to wreak havoc on Sony's bottom line. The struggling electronics company posted a net loss of 159 billion yen, or about $2.1 billion, for the October 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011 quarter.
Big things might be in store for Motorola Mobility if Google's acquisition is able to proceed unabated, but for the fourth quarter of 2011, the mobile device maker posted a net loss of $80 million, albeit that figure is largely the result of write-off costs related to the proposed takeover. Still, it's a complete reversal of fortunes compared to the fourth quarter of 2010 when Motorola Mobility posted an $80 million profit.
The words of Neil Sedaka singing about how "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" must be ringing in AT&T's ears. The wireless carrier reported a substantial $6.7 billion loss for the quarter ended December 31, 2011, which is mostly attributable to breakup fees resulting from AT&T's failed attempt to acquire T-Mobile. That's a nearly $8 billion swing from one year prior when AT&T posted a profit of $1.09 billion.
Nintendo offered a couple of excuses as to why it posted significant losses for the April-December period when one year prior the numbers were looking pretty rosy. The house that Super Mario built got beat up during the nine months ended December 31, 2011, with sales totaling 556.2 billion yen, or $7.2 billion, down nearly a third from the same time period in 2010.
If Nokia's upcoming Lumia 900 device proves all that a bag of chocolate covered popcorn, perhaps it will give the Finnish phone maker some much needed momentum going into 2012. Nokia needs the Lumia 900 and subsequent smartphones to be successful. Sales were down 21 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter at Nokia, and its operating profit tipped into the negative side to the tune of 1.07 billion euros, or $1.4 billion.
AMD won't be popping open any champagne bottles to celebrate 2011, during which time the Santa Clara chip maker pulled in $6.57 billion in revenue, falling flat year-over-year. Revenue also fell flat sequentially at $1.69 billion, representing a net loss of $177 million, or $0.24 per share, along with operating income of $71 million. But all things considered, it could have been much worse.
Verizon Wireless today said its year-over-year quarterly revenue grew by 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, the largest it's been in VZW's 11-year history. The company also touted strong cash flows and 18.2 percent shareholder returns in 2011, but none of it could mask the fact that VZW posted a loss of 71 cents in diluted earners per share (EPS), or a loss of $2.02 billion, compared with earnings of 93 cents a share, or a profit of $2.64 billion one year prior.
The Windows operating system is Microsoft's bread and butter and added $4.74 billion to the Redmond software giant's bottom line for its second fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2011. Oddly enough, that number represents a 6 percent drop in sales from the prior period. What's more, Windows sales accounted for just 22.7 percent of Microsoft's overall revenue, the lowest share in more than two years.
If it weren't for HTC, who knows what the Android market would look like today. HTC almost single-handedly turned Google's Android platform into what seemed like an overnight success, only it was overnight. Back in February 2009, HTC was the mobile device maker blitzing the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with a bevy of Android devices, and HTC's gamble into what would become a hugely popular operating system paid off big time. Record profits would follow, so the fact that HTC's numbers in the fourth quarter of 2011 weren't quite as explosive as previous quarters is not reason to panict. Let's look at the figures.
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