Apple and Samsung Slug it Out in the Smartphone Wars

No one else comes close as the two heavyweights for tech gadgets blow the field away with their latest figures. Apple reported its third-quarter iPhone 5 launch profits, but Samsung is way ahead in overall sales. 

Sales Apocalypse Incoming!

Next quarter, Apple will report its figures for the recently announced iPad 4, iPad mini, new iPods and new Macs. It threatens to be the biggest thing since The Beatles, which for some men in suits talking numbers is pretty scary.  This quarter, Apple merely reported the 5 million iPhone 5 sales and a few other bits and pieces (get the detailed numbers here). 

The company reported $36 billion in revenue, $8.2 billion in net profit, based on sales of 26.9 million iPhones, 14 million iPads, 4.9 million Macs and 5.3 million iPods. iPod sales were down almost 20% from this period last year but could well ping back up as the new models launch, Mac sales sneaked up 1%, but will all those new models may well go ballistic while iPad sales are up 25%.

That lot represents a record September quarter for Apple, and it is expecting $52 billion in the next quarter (and Apple usually underestimates these numbers)! Shareholders get a dividend of $2.65 per share. 

Enter Samsung's Powerhouse

Samsung, with its far wider product range (including the new mini Galaxy SIII) and the fact that it makes stuff for a lot of other companies (including Apple, as well as Google's new 10-inch tablet), manages to make Apple's figures look pretty small. The company sold 56.3 million smartphones, which accounts for over 31% of the global market, double Apple's 15% figure. However, Samsung's stock value is just a third of Apple's.

However, its financial figures are pretty comparable with net profit for the South Korean firm doubled to a record 6.6 trillion Korean Won, around $6 billion in 3Q, powered by smartphone sales and huge demand for its processors, display panels and use of its manufacturing base.

The figure isn't higher than Apple's as Samsung struggles with the lumbering HDTV market (although its large TV panel sales are back in profit), and making all these things is expensive, with continuous rising costs in Asia. There is no breakdown yet on how the Samsung Galaxy SIII is selling (Samsung say it has shipped 20 million). That will be the key point of comparison for many, and while Apple is expected to surge next quarter, Samsung is looking at reduced profits. 

Anyone Else?

The other smartphone makers are so far down the scale it seems rude to compare them. The analyst firms will produce their next comparisons in the coming weeks, but it doesn't look like good news for anyone outside the top two. 

On the tablet front, Amazon also reported its figures with a $274 million net loss, but only stated that the Kindle FIre HD (which it sells at a loss) was the No. 1 product across Amazon stores worldwide. With the product just hitting Europe and Japan expect it to continue to dominate in the run up to Christmas and the company to benefit from content sales.

Despite their legal battles, both must be pretty happy at the top of the pile, and it is hard to see how even almighty Windows Phone 8 and Surface or Lumia and Asha sales could propel Microsoft or Nokia anywhere close, that is a battle that will take years to win. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

As Q3 Sales Slip, IBM Looks Beyond Hardware to Cloud, Analytics, Social

Big Blue released its Q3 numbers last night and it’s makes for grim reading. IBM revenues slipped below analysts' expectation as poor economic conditions around the world hit profits in American global corporations.

Hardware a Problem for IBM In Q3

Not that there is any real concern about the future of IBM. Mark Loughbridge, the company's CF0, stands by his predictions of a good year for IBM when it rounds up things at the end of the fourth quarter. That said, there is trouble in the kitchen. Hardware sales seem to be the principal problem this time around, even if figures in other IBM business segments were far from overwhelming.

Overall, the company reported a third-quarter profit of US$ 3.82 billion, down from US$ 3.84 billion a year earlier, with revenue sliding 5.4 percent to US$ 24.75 billion.

But if this were an "IT Christmas Carol," we might be citing the Ghost of Leo Apothekar-Past, as the drop of 13 percent in hardware sales that IBM experienced over the quarter is more than just a market hiccup.

Apothekar, you may remember, had tried to pull HP out of hardware last year, predicting that hardware was in for a rough ride. The move that cost him his CEO stripes at HP.

But it seems now that he was only reacting to the reality of a market that is steadily shrinking, as governments and large enterprises in Europe extend their IT replacement cycles and hold onto the hardware they have, in order to cut costs.

Global Problems

Indeed much of the revenue shortfall that we see in this set of figures was blamed on the economic woes in Europe, which translated not only into falling sales, but also fewer dollars for every sale, thanks to a weaker euro.

There were also signs of slowdown in the company’s technology-consulting services, but there were other problems as well. The problems included:

• Geography: It wasn’t just Europe that performed badly — the US and Australia didn’t do too well, either. Revenue in US was US$ 10.4 billion, down 4 percent from a year earlier. Europe, the Middle East and Africa earned revenues of US$ 7.2 billion, down 9 percent on last year. Asia-Pacific managed to rise by 1 percent to US$ 6.5 billion, showing that India and China, despite everything, are still strong performers.
• Software: This is generally considered one of the indicators of company health and this time around it didn’t do too badly, although it has performed better in the past. Revenues here were US$ 5.8 billion, with revenues from its middleware products like Tivoli, Lotus and WebSphere down 1 percent to US$ 3.6 million.
• Systems and Technology: This includes hardware and totaled US$ 3.9 billion, down 13 percent on this time last year. Revenue for systems sales and services not including retail systems were down 8 percent on the year. System Storage revenue decreased by 10 percent from a year earlier. IBM says it was hit by the sale of its point-of-sale technology to Toshiba, was well as the introduction of new mainframe equipment that hit earlier lines.

IBM’s Cloud, Analytics, Social Business

However, IBM has invested in technologies that are quickly becoming the wave of the future, and expects to ride out difficult times using this.

By 2015, it has said on previous occasions, it is expecting to add US$ 20 billion to its revenue through cloud computing, analytics, its smarter planet initiative and investments in emerging markets.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com