Posts tagged Last
Driven By iPhone and iPad Growth, Apple Revenue Topped $46 Billion Last Quarter
Jan 24th
In its quarterly earnings call this afternoon, Apple threw around quite a few very large numbers. For starters, the company brought in $46.3 billion dollars in the last quarter, which was a 73% increase over the previous year. In terms of profit, they netted $13.1 billion, a 118% year-over-year increase and a number that exceeds Google’s entire quarterly revenue, as one observer pointed out.
By far the biggest chunk of revenue came from the iPhone and related products. This isn’t surprising considering the highly successful launch of the iPhone 4S in October, which landed at the same time as iOS 5 and iCloud. The quarter on which Apple was reporting today also included the holiday shopping season, which is always a peak time for smartphones, MP3 players and tablets.
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In total, the company sold 37 million iPhones throughout the quarter, which exceeded those sold in the same time period last year by 128%. Apple CEO Tim Cook cited the “breathtaking” customer reception to the iPhone 4S, as well as the launch of Siri, iOS 5 and improved camera optics.
It also didn’t hurt that in the previous quarter, sales missed expectations due to the fact that so many consumers were holding out for the next iPhone. That device was finally launched during the last quarter, and it was a huge one for Apple. In January, the iPhone 4S began shipping in China and now has a presence in over 90 countries.
iPad: Still Dominant, But What About the Competition?
The next biggest growth area for Apple was the iPad. Taken together, the iPad and iPhone product lines now account for 72% of the company’s quarterly revenue. This is a trend that’s been underway for awhile and the share of revenue generated by the iPad and iPhone just seems to keep growing. The stats speak volumes about the explosive growth of smartphones and tablets in general, two markets that Apple has played a massive role in.
The company pointed to the enterprise and educational institutions as two key sources of growth for the iPad. The latter point is no shock in light of last week’s launch of iBooks 2, iBooks Author and an enhanced iTunes U app. While it was received with mixed reactions, the move marked Apple’s biggest formal foray into the education space, where it intends to use the iPad as a way to deliver interactive digital textbooks to students.
When asked about other players in the tablet space, Cook said that the company doesn’t “really see these limited function tablets, these e-readers, as being in the same category.” In other words, it’s not worried about the Kindle Fire or any other Android-based tablets. The iPad may continue to be overwhelmingly dominant, but we’ll see in a few weeks whether the iPad 3′s features or price point are changing in response to any of the other players on the market.
While less dramatic than its iPad and iPhone results, Apple did see quarterly and year-over-year growth in almost every other category, including Mac desktops and laptops.
The only category that saw a decrease from 2012 was the iPod, although it’s worth noting that iPod sales did increase notably from the prior quarter. Year over year, however, the devices are no longer a huge source of growth for Apple, whose smartphones and tablets include all of the functionality of an iPod, in addition to access to 550,000 apps available in the iTunes App Store. Despite being overshadowed by its more sophisticated siblings, the iPod is still the top-selling MP3 player in many major markets.
At this point, Apple is sitting on a ton of money. The company now boasts $97.6 billion in cash, but Cook declined to comment on how they plan on spending that.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Driven By iPhone and iPad Growth, Apple Earned Over $46 Billion Last Quarter
Jan 24th
In its quarterly earnings call this afternoon, Apple threw around quite a few very large numbers. For starters, the company brought in $46.3 billion dollars in the last quarter, which was a 73% increase over the previous year. In terms of profit, they netted $13.1 billion, a 118% year-over-year increase and a number that exceeds Google’s entire quarterly revenue, as one observer pointed out.
By far the biggest chunk of revenue came from the iPhone and related products. This isn’t surprising considering the highly successful launch of the iPhone 4S in October, which landed at the same time as iOS 5 and iCloud. The quarter on which Apple was reporting today also included the holiday shopping season, which is always a peak time for smartphones, MP3 players and tablets.
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In total, the company sold 37 million iPhones throughout the quarter, which exceeded those sold in the same time period last year by 128%. Apple CEO Tim Cook cited the “breathtaking” customer reception to the iPhone 4S, as well as the launch of Siri, iOS 5 and improved camera optics.
It also didn’t hurt that in the previous quarter, sales missed expectations due to the fact that so many consumers were holding out for the next iPhone. That device was finally launched during the last quarter, and it was a huge one for Apple. In January, the iPhone 4S began shipping in China and now has a presence in over 90 countries.
iPad: Still Dominant, But What About the Competition?
The next biggest growth area for Apple was the iPad. Taken together, the iPad and iPhone product lines now account for 72% of the company’s quarterly revenue. This is a trend that’s been underway for awhile and the share of revenue generated by the iPad and iPhone just seems to keep growing. The stats speak volumes about the explosive growth of smartphones and tablets in general, two markets that Apple has played a massive role in.
The company pointed to the enterprise and educational institutions as two key sources of growth for the iPad. The latter point is no shock in light of last week’s launch of iBooks 2, iBooks Author and an enhanced iTunes U app. While it was received with mixed reactions, the move marked Apple’s biggest formal foray into the education space, where it intends to use the iPad as a way to deliver interactive digital textbooks to students.
When asked about other players in the tablet space, Cook said that the company doesn’t “really see these limited function tablets, these e-readers, as being in the same category.” In other words, it’s not worried about the Kindle Fire or any other Android-based tablets. The iPad may continue to be overwhelmingly dominant, but we’ll see in a few weeks whether the iPad 3′s features or price point are changing in response to any of the other players on the market.
While less dramatic than its iPad and iPhone results, Apple did see quarterly and year-over-year growth in almost every other category, including Mac desktops and laptops.
The only category that saw a decrease from 2012 was the iPod, although it’s worth noting that iPod sales did increase notably from the prior quarter. Year over year, however, the devices are no longer a huge source of growth for Apple, whose smartphones and tablets include all of the functionality of an iPod, in addition to access to 550,000 apps available in the iTunes App Store. Despite being overshadowed by its more sophisticated siblings, the iPod is still the top-selling MP3 player in many major markets.
At this point, Apple is sitting on a ton of money. The company now boasts $97.6 billion in cash, but Cook declined to comment on how they plan on spending that.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Priceline’s Shatner ‘Negotiator’ Makes His Last Deal Today
Jan 23rd
Perhaps not since “The Sweet Hereafter” has there ever been a more pivotal bus crash shown on TV or in the movies. Today Priceline begins a new ad campaign that shows the death of its William Shatner “Negotiator” character. (Sorry, but you might as well see the ad, get the ending up front.) For those of you that haven’t seen the movie based on a Russell Banks story, it is worth renting just for Ian Holm’s wonderful performance. But back to Priceline and Shatner.
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Shatner is still under contract with Priceline for another year, and has been the spokesmodel for the company for 14 years, one of the most enduring relationships in modern advertising times. Ironically, he was given stock warrants that were worth $10 million at the time of the company’s IPO, which he sold at the bottom of the market. These shares would be worth $5 million today: you could say that he didn’t negotiate the best deal for himself.
Priceline is using the bus crash ad to spread the word about its pay-full-price service: most of us know them for their deals for low prices on unknown hotels. It probably is a good reminder, and is as campy as the other ads involving Shatner, who in a blaze of glory, helps the passengers off before plunging to his filmic and fiery death.
As a teen when the original Star Trek series was first run on network TV, I was a big fan of James T. Kirk, the original character that Shatner played before becoming a self-parody with such delicious roles as a worn-out beauty pageant executive, an eccentric lawyer, a womanizing cop and a hyperbolic pitchman. And then there are the numerous spoken-word recordings too. Now, don’t get all hot and bothered: I love the guy, and his wooden portrayal of Kirk set the gold standard for other Trek leaders, including the only woman starship commander Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. Mulgrew had her own role as pitching IBM’s OS/2, which was nicknamed Warp after the series.
So goodbye Bill. May you continue to live long and prosper.
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“Dream High 2″ Releases Last Official Poster of its Six Leads – Soompi
Jan 15th
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"Dream High 2" Releases Last Official Poster of its Six Leads
Soompi This last poster also features the six leads of the drama – Park Seo Joon, JB, T-ara's Park Ji Yeon, Kang So Ra, 2AM's Jung Jin Woon , and SISTAR's Hyorin – displaying their character's personalities through their expressions. Park Seo Joon, JB, … |
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Hulu Grew Revenue 60% Last Year, Still Blocks Google TV & Boxee
Jan 12th
Hulu didn’t end up getting sold in 2011, but it nonetheless turned out to be a pretty big year for the premium video streaming service. Overall, the business grew by 60% over the previous year and raked in $420 million in revenue.
That money came from a combination of ad sales and paid subscriptions to the service’s Hulu Plus offering. They now have 1.5 million paying subscribers. It’s a far cry from Netflix’s more than 23 million paying members, but then again Hulu Plus only went live in 2010. According to Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, this is the fastest any paid video streaming service has reached 1.5 million users.
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For both free and premium users, Hulu increased its selection of content substantially last year, most recently adding television shows from The CW and Univision. That focus on expanding its library of content will continue well into 2012, with a planned $500 million investment in acquiring the rights to television shows and movies.
Hulu’s growth is also fueled in part by its continued expansion into other markets around the globe as well as the effort the company puts into making its service available on a wide range of devices. Most gaming consoles, smartphones and tablets now have an app for Hulu Plus, even if many of them can’t access the advertising-supported Hulu website. This year, Hulu launched dedicated apps for the Kindle Fire, XBox 360 and Nook e-reader, among others.
Despite the long list of supported devices, Hulu’s cross-device compatibility could be even better. The service has irked users of Boxee and Google TV-powered units by blocking access to those devices. Even though Hulu Plus is available in the Android Market, that app can’t run on Google TV and when you try to navigate to Hulu.com from the platform’s Web browser, the site is blocked on Hulu’s end. The same is true of the Boxee Box. A long-awaited Hulu Plus app for the Apple TV is allegedly ready and working, but has been held up due to political reasons.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Hulu Grew Revenue 40% Last Year, Still Blocks Google TV & Boxee
Jan 12th
Hulu didn’t end up getting sold in 2011, but it nonetheless turned out to be a pretty big year for the premium video streaming service. Overall, the business grew by 40% over the previous year and raked in $420 million in revenue.
That money came from a combination of ad sales and paid subscriptions to the service’s Hulu Plus offering. They now have 1.5 million paying subscribers. It’s a far cry from Netflix’s more than 23 million paying members, but then again Hulu Plus only went live in 2010. According to Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, this is the fastest any paid video streaming service has reached 1.5 million users.
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For both free and premium users, Hulu increased its selection of content substantially last year, most recently adding television shows from The CW and Univision. That focus on expanding its library of content will continue well into 2012, with a planned $500 million investment in acquiring the rights to television shows and movies.
Hulu’s growth is also fueled in part by its continued expansion into other markets around the globe as well as the effort the company puts into making its service available on a wide range of devices. Most gaming consoles, smartphones and tablets now have an app for Hulu Plus, even if many of them can’t access the advertising-supported Hulu website. This year, Hulu launched dedicated apps for the Kindle Fire, XBox 360 and Nook e-reader, among others.
Despite the long list of supported devices, Hulu’s cross-device compatibility could be even better. The service has irked users of Boxee and Google TV-powered units by blocking access to those devices. Even though Hulu Plus is available in the Android Market, that app can’t run on Google TV and when you try to navigate to Hulu.com from the platform’s Web browser, the site is blocked on Hulu’s end. The same is true of the Boxee Box. A long-awaited Hulu Plus app for the Apple TV is allegedly ready and working, but has been held up due to political reasons.
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Microsoft’s Last CES Keynote: The Undiscovered Country
Jan 9th
If you happened to see the movie Star Trek VI (the last one with the original TV cast) when it premiered in theaters in 1991, perhaps there may have been a moment (or a dozen) when something occurred to you: You didn’t have to dislike or even fail to appreciate these actors on-screen to realize, yep, there’s a reason why this is – and should be – their last performance in this venue.
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Although the fellow who runs CES, the CEA’s Gary Shapiro, introduced Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Monday evening by saying that Microsoft would be taking a “pause” from CES keynotes after this year, if you sat through the entire hour and eighteen minutes, you probably felt it even if you’re a Microsoft fan. It really is time. One moment longer would be one too long.
For most of the keynote, Ballmer was seated across a patio table from American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, both trying nervously to generate banter like two cars trying to jump start each other in an Alaska snowstorm. It was clear that Seacrest hadn’t read much about the material before showing up on stage, as he was constantly searching for the location of his cues. TV people expect their cues to come from teleprompters, at eye level; public speakers look down toward monitors showing PowerPoint slides.
“We have a chance in the next year to really raise our game, our product line, to the next level, across phones, PCs, tablets, TV, the Xbox,” opened Ballmer. “And really the heart and soul of that will be our kinda featured attraction tonight, our new Metro user interface.”
Not since 1995 has the layout of an operating system been considered the keynote attraction at an electronics conference. Metro is the overall style of layout being applied to new apps for Windows Phone, Windows 8, and now Xbox 360. “I think people will be kind of impressed at how it lights everything up.”
Seacrest thought that was a cue for something. It wasn’t, so he searched for some sense of direction. Finding none at eye-level, he quickly ad-libbed: “When you said, ‘Metro,’ you looked at me in a strange way… Is it the jacket, the sweater, or the combination?” Ballmer got the joke, and then feigned laughter, which is about the second most painful thing you can witness Ballmer ever doing.
Even for a company that may yet have some irons in the fire, it was hard to watch this company stretch things out for time. There were truly painful moments, reminiscent of sitting through an infomercial for Time-Life Music, with some ’50s legend of the stage now running on fumes, filling an hour reminding you about how excited he was and how great the past used to be.
It’s no secret that stage show producers plant folks in the audience to help applaud at the right moments and generate enthusiasm (I’ve sat next to a few). This year, when the applause came from about eight people in response to the arrival on-stage of the Windows Phone part of the presentation, the groans from the rest of the crowd drowned them out.
Then Seacrest, who truly is a stranger to quiet crowds, tried to jump in and save the day, as though this were a Vegas lounge act and it was bombing. Holding out his hand in their direction as if to invite them to stand, he said, “The design team over here.”
“We definitely took a different approach than everybody else,” Ballmer then explained, “and I think we’ve got a unique and beneficial experience. All these phones these days, they all make calls, they connect to the Internet, they e-mail, social networks, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah,” he added in what has come to be heralded as Ballmer’s typically dismissive attitude toward market categories where his company is not the leader.
“If you take a look at it, the other phones make the sea of icons, the sea of applications, the kind of view of the world. What we’ve really done with Windows Phone, I think, is have a better way by putting your people, the people who are important to you, whether it’s dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions in somebody’s case, I might think,” the CEO added, trying to hand off to Seacrest. There was a train of thought there that would have been oh, so welcome at CES 2009, when Microsoft had a prototype concept but opted instead to hold those cards close to its chest, and tout Windows Mobile instead.
When Ballmer moved to the topic of Windows 8, the old syndrome continued to rear its ugly head: starting a new train of thought, building a metaphor, and then found himself descending into a list of things popping into his head that, impulsively, he could not then ignore.
“Of course, things change – that’s the essence of this industry,” he replied to Seacrest at one point. “In some senses, maybe the only two things that are constant: Number one, things change. And number two, people don’t want to compromise on what they have today. They want the best of what they have and the best of what they want. Nobody wanted to give up anything they had on their desktop, for example, when the world moved to notebooks. It’s a wonderful thing. The Windows PCs evolved – it was a programming machine, it was a productivity machine, a music machine, a video machine, an Internet machine. But we don’t give up anything.”
This evening, we saw the first sign of later builds of Windows 8 running on “Intel-inspired” ultrabooks, than the Developer’s Preview that premiered last fall in Anaheim. The green background tone of the Metro-style Start menu has been muted to more of a teal, and multiple saved bookmarks in IE10 are now multi-colored. Besides these factors, there was not much noticeable difference.
Easily the most painful moment of the evening came, sadly, from a gospel choir that had been hired to improvise wonderful, joyful sounds based on tweets that were being streamed in over the speakers’ monitors below stage. It wasn’t painful for the music; the voices were actually good. Some of the tweets they were singing were selected refrains of excitement from viewers looking forward to the upcoming Xbox-related announcements.
And here they were: The arrival of the Metro-style interface for selecting programming choices (which some Xbox players are already doing). This was followed by a preview of a Metro-style programming guide for Verizon FiOS, which will soon also be tailored for Comcast subscribers (who know they’ll still have to subscribe to Comcast’s HD STBs whether they use Xboxes instead or not).
And a live demonstration of a little girl who was obviously a few years graduated from Sesame Street, using the Kinect tool to toss imaginary coconuts into Grover’s cardboard box.
Not all of these are bad things – certainly I would have seriously considered this Kinect app for my daughter had it been made available a decade earlier. It’s just that the first rule of public speaking is “Know Your Audience,” and this amalgam of software-related events, most of which we’ve already seen, speaks to a vastly different audience than the one assembled here in Las Vegas. The audience is doing the types of things that Ballmer describes as “blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.” There was a disconnect this year, a clear sign that Microsoft has moved one way and CES another. Rather than prolong the agony, perhaps it’s best to just say it’s time, and move on.
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Last Call To Speak At SMX West
Jan 6th
We’re finalizing the speaker lineup for SMX West, and there are still a few openings. We’re particularly interested in hearing from you if you can speak knowledgeably on the following topics: Best Practices With adCenter For Bing & Yahoo Beyond The Google AdWords Tool Duplication,…
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Shattering Records, We Downloaded Over 1 Billion Mobile Apps Last Week
Jan 2nd
During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, users downloaded more than 1 billion apps for the first time ever in a week-long period. Across iOS and Android, over 1.2 billion apps were downloaded, according to a new report by Flurry Analytics. That was a 60% increase over early December.
The holiday season typically sees a surge in mobile application downloads, especially once Christmas Day arrives and countless consumers all over the world unwrap their new Android devices, iPhones, iPads and iPods. In a true testament to the continued proliferation of these devices, this year’s holiday spike in app downloads was a one for the record books, according to Flurry’s data.
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The vast majority of downloads were seen in the United States and several other Western countries made the top ten. In second place was China, which saw 99 million downloads. That sounds like a lot, but it’s relatively small compared to China’s overall installed base, as the report pointed out. It’s the second biggest app market in the world, but only saw about one fifth of downloads the week after Christmas, which of course is not as widely celebrated in China.
Apple hasn’t released numbers, but there’s little doubt that items like iPads, iPhones and the iPod Touch did quite well this holiday season, and for those who already own such devices an iTunes Store gift card made for a no-brainer of a present. Amazon’s own Kindle Fire, which has access to a limited version of the Android Marketplace, was that company’s top-selling and most frequently gifted item this holiday season as well.
The 1 billion weekly downloads threshold may be a new one, but it’s one that Flurry expects to see continue well into 2012. There’s very little reason to doubt that prediction, as smartphones and tablets continue to pick up steam in the marketplace and new devices from Apple, Amazon and Android handset manufacturers are expected to drop throughout the year, in many cases at lower price points.
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Random Hacks of Kindness Has Global Meetup Last Weekend
Dec 7th
We last wrote about the Random Hacks of Kindness operation a year ago. Twice a year, a group of programmers gather together for an intense weekend in 28 different cities around the world to benefit some good causes and write some code. Last weekend was the fifth such occurrence, with about a thousand different participants and with more than 90 projects being worked on. That is a lot of hacking going on, almost too much to review in a single article.
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And it wasn’t just coders eating a lot of pizza either: the meetups included designers, project managers, PR and marketing professionals and others less tech-savvy. The causes included Doctors Without Borders, the World Bank, Oxfam and even some hyperlocal challenges too.
For example, one hack (which was the winning San Francisco entry) called Drop2Drink included assembling a geo-coded map of the 60-some odd fire hydrants that are used for delivering emergency drinking water in San Francisco in case of an earthquake. The hydrants had small markings on them but no one, until now, had taken the time to do a census and make their locations available online in any meaningful manner. Here is the team hard at work.
This past weekend the organizers tried to encapsulate some institutional memory and use the efforts of prior hacks to help build on new projects. For example, this Philadelphia project drew on what was done a year ago in Bogota, Colombia for locating the nearest homeless shelter based on your current location. And two teams in Portland and Boston were linked together on similar solutions for disaster awareness and helped to reduce duplicated efforts and increase capability for users and help first responders better coordinate their own disaster management efforts.
There are plenty of other examples from cities all over the world that are worth perusing on their website. The next RHOK event is scheduled for June 2012.
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