Phone maker HTC is facing tough future February 6, 2012 TAIWANESE smartphone maker HTC has yet to catch up with market dominators Apple and Samsung, posting expectations of a weak quarter ahead despite strong growth in fiscal 2011. The world’s number five smartphone maker said it expects revenues of 65bn Taiwanese dollars (£1.4bn) in the first three months of this year, down from T$101.42bn in [...]
Taiwanese firm is caught in pincer February 6, 2012 THE demise of Nokia happened in slow motion. Apple released its first iPhone in 2007 but it took almost four years before Nokia admitted it was “standing on a burning platform”. Even now, some believe Nokia’s new Microsoft Windows smartphone, the Lumia, could snatch the Finnish handset maker from the jaws of defeat (for the [...]
Panasonic lurching towards record £6bn loss February 3, 2012 Japan’s Panasonic Corp forecast a record net annual loss of £6.4bn, joining beleaguered rival Sony Corp in a sea of red ink, both struggling to fix their broken TV businesses and overcome criticism that they have lost their way. Panasonic, posting quarterly results, said it was headed for a loss of 780bn yen (£6.46bn) for [...]
Sony to lurch further into red February 2, 2012 TROUBLED electronics company Sony is set to make its fourth consecutive annual loss – the worst run in its 54 years as a listed firm – as the group yesterday upped its loss forecast from ¥90bn (£750m) to ¥220bn. Sony also slashed its previous operating income forecast of ¥20bn to a ¥95bn loss. The third [...]
Stringer set to step down as Sony chief February 1, 2012 WELSH-born Sir Howard Stringer is to step down as president and chief executive of Sony after a fifteen year run at the Japanese electronics company, to be replaced by Kazuo Hirai. Hirai, aged 51 and currently executive deputy president, will take Stringer’s seat on 1 April. Stringer – a rare foreign chief executive for a leading [...]
BlackBerry tops handset sales… sort of February 1, 2012 So, the biggest selling phone of last year was the… BlackBerry. It’s been a mixed year for… Wait… What? BlackBerry? Seriously? After a year that has seen global blackouts and gigantic writedowns – culminating in its co-chief executives stepping down last month – RIM has come out with a tub-thumping statement claiming to be the [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING January 31, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES EU TO RULE ON DEUTSCHE BÖRSE AND NYSE MERGER The NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse tie-up today faces its day of reckoning in Brussels, as European Union commissioners are expected to sign-off a recommendation to block a merger that allegedly stifles competition. BAA SIGNALS END TO HOPES OVER STANSTED RUNWAY BAA has signalled [...]
Apple accounts for a quarter of smartphones shipped globally January 30, 2012 APPLE has regained its place at the top of the global smartphone shipments table with almost a quarter of the market share, booting Samsung to second place, according to Juniper Research. Of the 149m smartphones shipped in the fourth quarter, 37m were iPhones, while Samsung followed a few million handset shipments behind. Juniper puts Apple’s [...]
Olympic Media Buzz LONDON 2012 PARTNERS January 29, 2012 IN ASSOCIATION with Repskan.com, the media monitoring and analytics platform, City A.M. is measuring the relative Olympic media buzz around the partners for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, week by week. The quarterly leaderboard, right, shows their position based on aggregate ranking from Wednesday 28 October 2011 to Wednesday 25 January 2012. As [...]
Record profits at Samsung on handset sales January 26, 2012 SAMSUNG, the world’s top technology firm by revenue, reported a record quarterly profit this morning, aided by its best-ever sales of smartphones, and hiked 2012 capital investment nine per cent to 25 trillion won (£8.9bn) to boost chips and flat-screen production. The South Korean firm reported a 5.3 trillion won operating profit for the last [...]