First-quarter spending on information technology goods and services was worse than Forrester Research predicted at the beginning of the year. But it will grow no worse. We’ve hit bottom. Finally. According to Forrester, anyway.
About the best thing to be said for Sony’s grotesque financial results is that they came in smaller than expected. The company’s 98.9 billion yen ($1 billion) loss for the fiscal year ended March–its first net loss in 14 years–wasn’t nearly as bad as the 150.0 billion yen ($1.57 billion) figure it had predicted in January or even close to the 173.8 billion yen ($1.8 billion) analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been forecasting.
Good thing Sirius XM Radio resolved the debt issues that threatened to drag it into bankruptcy earlier this year; the company’s clearly got other things to worry about. Like fleeing subscribers. Reporting a first-quarter net loss of $236.6 million this morning, Sirius said that anemic car sales had led to its first-ever decline in net subscriber additions. And it was a nasty decline.
More ugly news from the Japanese electronics industry today. Sanyo Electric, the world’s largest producer of rechargeable batteries, this morning slashed its earnings forecast for the second time in as many months.
With the Dow near its lowest point in a decade and global PC shipments down for the first time since 2002, according to market research firm IDC, Hewlett-Packard reported fiscal first-quarter earnings today, and though they met Wall Street’s expectations, they were clearly not what the market had been hoping for.
So the seemingly unfailing demand for Nintendo’s Wii? Failing. Though Wii manufacturer Nintendo posted a 21 percent gain in quarterly operating profit on brisk demand for the videogame console, it slashed its forecast for full-year sales of the device.
Goldman Sachs published its “Americas: 2009 Software Outlook” report today and it’s as dismal and ugly a forecast as you’d expect, given the current economic climate.
Of course, as ugly as it was, it could have been worse.
Nokia’s Capital Markets Day event is proving quite the downer, and the day’s only just begun. This morning the company cut its global handset market forecast for the second time in three weeks, warning that the slowdown in the industry is worse than expected.
The deepening recession is playing havoc with EBay’s now nine-month old turnaround strategy. While the company beat Wall Street’s lowered expectations for its third quarter Wednesday, it also updated it’s guidance to better reflect “current business trends.” And “current business trends” being what they are, that guidance falls somewhere between lousy and repellent.
To hear tell from Steve Jobs, Apple doesn’t think its new App Store will make a material contribution to its bottom line. “To be clear, we don’t intend to make money off the App Store,” Jobs said at a town-hall meeting earlier this year announcing the store. “We’re basically giving all the money to the developers, and the 30% that pays for running the store, that’ll be great.” Course, it will be greater still if it adds a few percentage points to Apple’s operating income. And according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, it will.
So that ugly downturn facing the semiconductor industry? Not going to be quite so ugly, say the folks at Gartner. After slashing its worldwide chip forecast from 6.2 % growth to 3.4% growth this past March, Gartner raised it by more than 1%. Seems the slowing U.S. economy hasn’t had as much of an impact on consumer electronics sales as the research outfit had feared.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is a little lighter in the wallet today–about $2 billion lighter–thanks to a third quarter sales miss that sent the company’s shares down some 8% in after-hours trading.
Oracle (ORCL) posted a 30% increase in profits and a 21% increase in revenue, both in line with expectations. But a 16% rise in [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best use of the Beeker “meee” ever.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
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