Shain's Technology News

ATT activated 7.6 million Apple iPhones during its 2011 fourth quarter and sold 9.4 million smartphones in total. This made it not only ATT’s best-ever quarter for Apple and Android smartphone sales, but the best-ever quarter for smartphone sales in the history of the industry, ATT CFO John Stephens said during a Jan. 26 earnings call.

During the call, executives offered a narrative in stark contrast to the one more frequently playing out in the media this year—one in which ATT’s failed bid for T-Mobile set it back several steps, both from the $4 billion and spectrum holdings that it had to pay to T-Mobile in a no-hard-feelings gesture written into the failed deal and the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) rollout momentum it was said to have lost during its nine-month fight for T-Mobile, while competitor Verizon sped ahead of projections.  

“We had a tremendous year in terms of execution, and we have excellent momentum across our growth platforms,” Randall Stephenson, ATT chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “This was a blowout quarter for sales. Our network performance is at a high level on voice quality and best-in-class mobile download speeds. Sales continue to be strong and business revenue trends are on a good track.”

While competitor Verizon activated 4.2 million iPhones during the quarter and posted a $2.02 billion loss that it attributed to pension and iPhone costs, ATT announced net income of $6.7 billion on revenue of $32.5 billion—up $1.1 billion, or 3.6 percent from a year ago. All of its key areas grew by double digits, including 10 percent growth in wireless and 43.7 percent growth in consumer U-verse. As with Verizon, all those smartphone additions took a toll on wireless margins, though data revenue over the long term is expected to be well worth the current hit.
Smartphone sales represented more than 80 percent of ATT’s postpaid device sales during the quarter, making now 57 percent of ATT’s 69.3 million postpaid subscribers smartphone owners.

“The smartphone is a platform,” Stephens said the during the call, repeating that the carrier that sells a smartphone to a customer will also be the carrier that customer turns to when they buy a tablet, home-monitoring capabilities or a range of other products. “It’s why we’re going so aggressively with LTE.”

Analysts with research firm Technology Business Research said in a statement that they believe there’s “significant opportunity” for carriers, particularly ATT, to grow the number of tablets connected to their network. 

“Any previous doubt about ATT’s ability to adapt to life without iPhone exclusivity was dismissed in 4Q11, as ATT activated a record 7.6 million iPhones [which was] 77 percent more units than competitor Verizon Wireless activated [during the fourth quarter],” the analysts said.

Opening and closing the earnings call, Stephenson was critical of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), expressing his frustration with its policies, the foot-dragging he said it showed in reaching decisions and the opaqueness of its decision making.

Describing the general need for spectrum, he explained that it wasn’t a matter of figuring out where more is—”When you scan the horizon, there are no secrets, everyone knows where it is”—but how to receive FCC approval to acquire it.

“Our problem is we don’t know what to do—who we’re allowed to do business with and how much spectrum we’re allowed to hold.”

When ATT reviewed the FCC report on the proposed T-Mobile acquisition, Stephenson said they found that, “to our surprise,” the FCC had “changed the spectrum screens,” though in a recently approved deal with Qualcomm the FCC used the old spectrum caps.

“It’s the who and what that are our big questions,” he repeated.

Article source: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/ATandT-Saw-Record-iPhone-Android-Smartphone-Sales-in-Q4-605889/

Canalys today provided analysis of recent, record-achieving financial results issued by smart phone vendors. Leading the pack, Apple broke its own sales and financial records and broke the record for the most smart phones shipped globally in a single quarter by a single vendor.

The 37 million iPhones shipped in Q4 beat the previous record of 28.3 million devices shipped by Nokia in Q4 2010. The huge volume of iPhones also exceeded the size of the entire market of four years ago, when a total of 35.5 million smartphones shipped globally. Apple’s quarterly revenue was more than $46 billion, profit came in at more than $13 billion, and gross margin reached nearly 45 percent, which beat expectations. The company ended the quarter with almost $98 billion in cash.

“Apple’s strong performance will no doubt be a concern to its competition, which need to keep pace with Apple’s innovation, defend against its patent litigation, and deliver products that can truly compete with the iPhone,” said Canalys Vice President and Principal Analyst Chris Jones. “Despite initial disappointment surrounding the lackluster new features of the iPhone 4S, the model has clearly been a triumph, and shipments benefitted from pent-up market demand.”

The iPhone 3GS, first released in the summer of 2009, continues to boost shipment volumes.

“Apple noted in its investors’ call that it has been particularly successful in mainland China, though the iPhone 4S only launched there last week, again to exceptional demand,” Jones added. “This kind of performance demonstrates the powerful aspirational pull the brand has achieved in markets all around the world.”

Samsung announced a 13 percent year-over-year increase in revenues to more than $47 trillion and a 76 percent increase in operating profit, to 5.3 trillion. The telecommunications division, which includes its mobile phone and tablet business, also had record earnings and profits. Samsung does not publicly announce its shipment numbers, but revealed quarterly growth in smart phones of approximately 30 percent. The vendor also said that its mobile phone shipments increased by more than 10 percent. The smartphone figures include devices shipped under the Google and T-Mobile brands.

Nokia posted a slight annual decline in its mobile phone volumes (excluding smartphones) at almost 94 million units in the quarter, but Canalys expects its lineup of Series 40 Asha products in the first quarter of 2012 to help it maintain its market position, particularly in emerging markets.

In addition, Nokia shipped nearly 20 million smartphones, which was substantially down on Q4 2010, but a decent performance given its current transitional state, Canalys said. Initial shipments of more than 1 million Nokia Windows Phone-based Lumia smartphones into a limited number of countries helped buoy volumes. Despite leaving room for optimism around its smartphone performance, Nokia’s revenues fell 21 percent from $16.6 billion a year ago to $13.2 billion in Q4 2011, and it suffered a $1.4 billion loss.

“Nokia’s new Windows Phone devices are an important step forward for the company, and that it managed to bring two products to market in 2011 and announce another device for North America in the opening weeks of the year is very encouraging,” said Pete Cunningham, a principal analyst with Canalys. “All three Lumia models are well designed, credible and competitive. They demonstrate Nokia’s ability to produce high-quality smartphones, but they are not game-changers, and the company still has a lot of work to do.”

“Q4 proved to be a tough quarter for many vendors, not least because of substantial demand for the iPhone 4S,” Jones said. “The numbers are still coming in, but our early take on the state of the smartphone market is that, while Apple and Samsung clearly saw phenomenal performances, many other vendors have struggled.”

Article source: http://www.vision2mobile.com/news/2012/01/top-smartphone-vendors-hit-record-volumes-in-q4.aspx

Cirrus Logic (Nasdaq: CRUS  ) lived up to its billing.

The audio-chip specialist came into Thursday’s earnings report on a strong tailwind. Share prices have jumped nearly 40% since the start of the year, mainly thanks to the company’s own pre-announcement of superb sales.

When the full third-quarter report came in, the stage was set for feast or famine. I can’t follow up a climb like that with mediocre earnings and then expect to keep the gains.

As it turns out, Cirrus deserved all that market love. The 28% year-over-year revenue jump to $122.4 million was matched with 26% stronger non-GAAP earnings at $0.43 per share.

Piece by piece
The crucial audio division actually improved sales by an even stronger 45%. And yes, it’s pretty much all thanks to Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL  ) . When your largest customer reports a blowout quarter of epic proportions, you’re bound to feel the benefits.

Not that Cirrus wouldn’t like to broaden its smartphone appeal, mind you, but the iPhone is the only model that really matters to the audio specialist. “In order for one of our customers to get a lot of value out of those functions, they need to really be targeting differentiating on audio quality, making a premium audio product,” explains CEO Jason Rhode. “To do that, you got to have a dock connector on your phone, and, frankly, there’s really only one of those out there that matters, and it happens to be the one we’re in.”

So Cirrus is working on some new audio products that aim to make smartphones not named iPhone stand out from the crowd, but those design cycles are still in the early stages. Stay tuned as this story unfolds.

The next stage
The next Apple-less growth opportunity isn’t a sound processor at all, but a power management module for LED lighting systems. That product is already in production with an order backlog in place, and should churn out as many as 10 million units in 2012 at $0.50 apiece. That’s a faster start than the well-documented audio division saw, and the potential for dramatic acceleration is definitely there.

Remember that traditional light bulbs are being forced out of the American market (and many others) by government decrees demanding higher efficiency. While some of that business will go to fluorescent tubes, fresher alternatives stand ready to enter the market in a big way. Cirrus would build on the LED lighting wizardry of Cree (Nasdaq: CREE  ) , Osram, and Philips Lumileds.

Most of these companies are vanishingly small segments of multinational giants, but Cree and Cirrus give us a more direct way to invest in the LED trend. You can get even more exotic with OLED lighting panels, which play a large part in my thesis for owning OLED expert Universal Display (Nasdaq: PANL  ) . That’s my personal preference, but only by a hair — there’s nothing wrong with tried-and-true LED technologies either. Maybe you don’t see it yet, but the alternative lighting markets will absolutely explode in 2013.

Cirrus is setting itself up to ride that sea change as hard as it can. Meanwhile, the audio success provides a stable and growing operating base, even if it’s tied to just one enormous customer. And Rhode expects a pretty smooth transition in that relay race: “Once LED starts to ramp, we wouldn’t expect that to be in a kind of a one-time, lumpy fashion,” he says. “LED lighting is more of a kind of design-in and razor blade, hopefully, model where people are ordering more and more as it goes on.”

Sounds good to me. Cirrus is one of the best performers in my all-star CAPS portfolio so far, and I expect that stellar trajectory to continue for years to come. Cirrus is one of the three best smartphone plays on the market today, and then there’s that lighting revolution as a big, juicy cherry on top. Get a free report on the massive opportunities for investors in the smartphone market right here. It won’t be available forever — hurry up and get yours before it’s gone.

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Article source: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/01/27/smartphones-today-light-bulbs-tomorrow-the-futures.aspx

Samsung has posted a record $4.7 billion quarterly profit that is largely based on the success of smartphone sales during the holiday buying season. The South Korean company also announced plans to spend $22 billion this year to increase chip and flat screen panel production to further gain leverage against smaller rivals.

Total revenue for Q4 2011 was reported at around $42 billion, good for a 13 percent increase year-to-year. Net profit was recorded at around $3.6 billion. For the full year, Samsung reported an operating profit of roughly $7.4 billion.

But it was the smartphone sector that shined the brightest for Samsung. The company earned nearly $16 billion during the quarter which is an increase of 52 percent over the same time period a year ago. Strong sales of the Galaxy S II and Note smartphones were cited, although specific sales figures were not released.

Samsung also recently launched the Galaxy Nexus as the first smartphone to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Furthermore, the company introduced the Note to the US market during the 2012 CES earlier this month in Las Vegas, although it was received with mixed initial reactions.

“Despite intensified competition amid the global economic slowdown, our Telecommunications businesses continued to post solid earnings with an enhanced line-up of high-end smartphones, resulting in higher average selling price (ASP),” said senior VP and head of investor relations Robert Yi.

Despite the tremendous success of Samsung’s smartphone business, it was Apple that ultimately won the worldwide smartphone battle by a very narrow margin as the top vendor in Q4, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

Image courtesy Mobirolla.

Article source: http://www.techspot.com/news/47221-samsung-credits-strong-smartphone-sales-for-record-q4-revenue.html

Okay, so it used to be that smartphone healthcare applications were simply novelty items that were fun to play around with but served no place in mainstream medicine, but didn’t we suspect that someday your phone or tablet might actually help physicians to save lives and reduce the cost of care? 

Welcome Everist Genomics, a relatively new, but fast growing medical technologies company, that has just successfully integrated smartphone and tablet computer technology with truly innovative and finally, medically valuable diagnostics in the areas of cardiovascular disease, metabolic diseases, (like diabetes) and even cancer.  So meet Everist Genomics’ CardioDefender. The CardioDefender is the world’s first FDA-approved  smartphone ECG (electrocardiogram) system that can actually provide physicians and patients with hospital-quality heart rhythm monitoring all done OUTSIDE of the hospital setting.  

The brand new CardioDefender utilizes many unique capabilities that let doctors diagnose and treat potentially life-threatening heart arrhythmias that might otherwise be missed.  CardioDefender is the first system to deliver mobile, real-time, beat-by-beat, and quantitative heart monitoring and automated reporting, by combining patented analytical smartphone software with its new Wi-Fi device and electrodes. “Honey, will you get the door? I’m having a cardiogram right now.”

The Defender works by utilizing a sensor bracelet that pretty much looks like a digital watch, the sensor then collects data and shoots it over to your smartphone, which analyzes it then stores it. If you in fact you do have a problem, you will receive an instant alert, but luckily, the data can also be sent to straight to your doctor. Which of course I would require, since the minute my smartphone told me I was having some kind of heart episode, I would certainly follow it up with a heart attack.

CardioDefender has already been deployed at more than 150 medical facilities in the United States for post-approval commercial evaluation and will be made available to physicians all over the world this year.

source:  www.insightvas.com

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Article source: http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20120127/smartphone-ecg-knew-coming/

By Miyoung Kim

SEOUL |
Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:17am EST

SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co posted a record $4.7 billion quarterly operating profit, driven by booming smartphone sales, and will spend $22 billion this year to boost production of chips and flat screens to pull further ahead of smaller rivals.

The South Korean firm, the world’s top technology firm by revenue, is locked in breakneck competition with Apple Inc in the red-hot smartphone market. Apple, overtaken by Samsung in the third quarter, regained its crown as the world’s biggest maker of smartphones in the fourth quarter, with record sales of 37.04 million iPhones.

Samsung didn’t give its own sales volume data, but research firm Strategy Analytics put sales at 36.5 million smartphones in October-December, with 3rd-ranked Nokia on 19.6 million. Smartphones account for around 40 percent of all Samsung’s handset shipments.

Samsung’s telecoms business earned a record 2.64 trillion won ($2.35 billion) profit in October-December on increased sales of its flagship Galaxy smartphones.

“The battle of the two big smartphone powers, Apple versus Samsung, will go on,” said Baik Jae-yer, fund manager at Korea Investment Management, which has around 9 percent of its portfolio in Samsung stock, according to end-September filings.

“The smartphone market will expand this year to more mid-and low-end models that are affordable to the wider public,” Baik said. “Rather than focus on market share, I’d point out the strong contribution of Samsung’s handset business to earnings growth and margins.”

Samsung’s October-December operating profit of 5.3 trillion won ($4.72 billion) was broadly in line with its earlier estimate and topped the previous record of 5 trillion won in the second quarter of 2010. Profit rose 76 percent from a year ago and 25 percent from the third quarter.

Samsung will increase spending this year by 9 percent to 25 trillion won – more than the GDP of leading cocoa producer Ivory Coast – with 15 trillion won going to the chips division, 6.6 trillion won to flat screens and the rest to boosting overseas production capacity and new research and development centers.

The record investment dwarfs a combined 1.3 trillion yen ($16.6 billion) that leading Japanese technology companies – Sony Corp, Toshiba Corp, Hitachi Ltd and Sharp Corp – have planned for the current year to end-March.

Samsung competes with Sony and LG Electronics Inc in televisions, Toshiba and Hynix in chips and LG Display in displays.

LG Display posted a narrower quarterly loss on Friday on demand from smartphone and tablet makers and as falling TV panel prices stabilize.

Samsung, which only entered the smartphone market in earnest in 2010 – some three years after the introduction of the iPhone with the touchscreen template – has adopted Apple’s breakthrough concept probably better than others – and now seeks to offer the Apple experience at a better price, with better functionality.

Apple is Samsung’s biggest client, buying mainly chips and displays, and the two firms are locked in a bruising patent battle in some 10 countries from the United States to Europe, Japan and Australia as they jostle for smartphone and tablet supremacy. In the latest legal skirmish, a German court ruled against Samsung in the second of three patent suits. The Mannheim court will decide on a third patent on March 2.

Apple, though, is streets ahead in profitability. It generates half its revenue from the iPhone, boasts a 37.4 percent operating margin, versus Samsung’s 11 percent, and its $17.3 billion operating profit is almost four times what Samsung earned from selling phones, chips, flat screens and TVs combined.

“Apple had good sales, but it’s very unlikely this will be a trend that will overwhelm Samsung later,” said Kim Young-chan, analyst at Shinhan Investment Securities, noting the likely boost to Apple sales from year-end promotions and the death of founder Steve Jobs.

“It’s unlikely Samsung and Apple will fight over each other’s market share, but they will eat up the market share of smaller companies like HTC and RIM,” Kim said.

Samsung forecast its strong momentum in mobiles would continue this year and it aimed for 15 percent margins from the business, though it could come under renewed consumer pressure if and when Apple brings out next-generation iPads and iPhones.

“Samsung is playing catch-up with Apple in smartphone sales volume, but it’s tougher to catch up in terms of margins,” said Lee Yong-jik, fund manager at PineBridge Investment, which owns nearly 2.5 million Samsung shares, according to an end-November filing. Lee forecast Samsung would ship 150-170 million smartphones this year, from below 100 million last year.

“But price competition will intensify, putting its handset margins under pressure,” added Kim.

CHIPS, FLAT SCREENS UNDER PRESSURE

Samsung faces headwinds this year, however, as global PC growth slows, likely denting sales of its core computer memory chips.

The company is looking to weather a squeeze on memory chips through new revenue sources such as mobile processing chips and high-end OLED displays. Rivals are increasingly turning to Samsung for components to power their tablets and smartphones.

Samsung makes mobile processors that power Apple’s iPhone and iPad as well as its own Galaxy mobile products.

The company has warned that oversupply in dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips will continue this quarter due to slack computer sales, while demand for flat screens is likely to remain subdued at least until March.

Yet Samsung is the only profitable DRAM chipmaker and is likely to fare better than rivals, as it invests heavily to cut production costs with finer processing technology.

Shares in Samsung, also the world’s top maker of memory chips and TVs, have risen by a fifth in the past three months and added 1.1 percent on Friday to a record high close of 1.125 million won. The KOSPI share index, up 3 percent in the past 3 months, rose 0.4 percent on Friday.

($1 = 1121.9000 Korean won)

(Additional reporting by Seoul newsroom; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and Ian Geoghegan)

Article source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-samsung-idUSTRE80P1KY20120127?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=71