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Tag: sales

  • Samsung Galaxy Note II reaches 3 million sales

    Samsung Galaxy Note II has already been a successful smartphone, since it has already sold 3 million units in just a month from its release. In fact, Samsung announced that it took Galaxy Note II just 37 days to reach the 3 million milestone, which is obviously a success for the brand. However, Apple's fans might say that iPhone 5 sold 5 million units in just 2 days, which raises the competition level even more between the two companies.

    Samsung Galaxy Note II has been one of the first smartphones that came with a 5.6-inch screen and became popular as one of the best "phablets" (phone and tablet) in the market. Although some were cautious about its sales due to its relatively large screen, which might have been uncomfortable in holding it, the numbers show that people like having a smartphone with a big screen. Even iPhone 5 slightly expanded its screen, which proves that the new trend is turning into phablet, instead of a simple smartphone.

    Samsung must feel really proud about their recent sales, since they topped the smartphone market in the third quarter between July and September, reaching the 56.3 sales. Now that we are approaching the Christmas holiday Samsung knows very well the importance of performing well in the last quarter of the year and all the bets are placed on Galaxy Note II, along with Galaxy S III. However, with iPhone 5 on the market, who will make the ultimate win of the year, topping the fourth quarter's sales? We just have to wait and see.

  • Plasma and LCD TV Sales Increase in Q2 2009

    Quixel Research’s newly launched USA Large Area Display Report revealed that in Q2 2009 the Plasma TV category was the only large screen TV category to show significant growth quarter-to-quarter.

    Plasma TV (40”+) sales were up 31% in volume and 35% in value when compared to Q1 2009 sales, almost topping the $1B mark.

    “Unit sales of 42” 720p Plasma TVs were up 40% quarter-to-quarter as consumers were looking for value in uncertain economic times,” stated Tamaryn Pratt, Quixel Research’s principal.

    “It also helped that all the models offered were from top brands so consumers felt comfortable making a competitively priced purchase backed up by a well know brand.”

    The surge in 42” 720p Plasma models lifted the segment’s unit share of the LAD category four percent quarter-to-quarter. Plasma TV value topped $910M in the second quarter.

    Revenue results for the overall Large Area Display market were flat or $3.1B in Q2 2009 and when compared to Q2 2008 revenues, were down nine percent. Overall volume for the LAD market was still strong with the market up five percent quarter-to-quarter and up 10 percent year-to-year.

    The research shows that the harsh economic climate didn’t also slow LCDTV sales in the second quarter with sales up significantly quarter-to-quarter. However it did push consumers to purchase entry models as well as smaller screen sized models.

    The overall LCDTV market grew nine percent quarter-to-quarter and 22 percent year-to-year.

    “Unit sales for 22”, 32” and 40/42” models supported the LCDTV category increase in the second quarter,” commented Pratt.

    When assessing large screen size sales results in Q2 2009, the report showed that LCDTV sales 40”+ were flat in units and declined nine percent in value when compared to Q1 2009.

    Connected LCDTVs, or TVs with built-in internet capabilities enabling content such as YouTube, Netflix, Tivo, Facebook etc., saw sales increase significantly in both units and value compared to the prior quarter. Unit sales of connected LCDTVs were up 39 percent quarter-to-quarter and 20 percent year-to-year.

  • Palm Pre App Count Builds – Now More Handsets?


    Palm must be hoping it can quickly build on estimated opening weekend sales of 60,000 Pre smartphones – not least because Apple has cranked up the pressure with the launch of a new iPhone.

    While Palm’s Saturday launch has largely been judged a success, it was hampered by supply constraints which saw most Sprint Nextel stores get less than 50 phones to sell.

    The limited supply of handsets meant that the Pre sold out in hours at most locations.

    Sprint’s flagship Manhattan store had 200 units at launch. Its store in Boston’s Back Bay area had only 55, while one in San Francisco’s Mission district had 60.

    Palm and Sprint strenuosly denied they were limiting supplies deliberately, instead the restrictions were put down to manufacturing constraints.

    As expected, between 80-90 per cent of the first buyers were already Sprint customers – while about 60 per cent were prior Palm owners.

    Meanwhile, while one of the major concerns for the Pre has been the lack of apps for the phone there has been a flow of new software being announced by developers since Saturday’s launch.

    Among them are the WHERE and Photobucket apps.

    WHERE is a location based application that allows users to find different content based on their geographic position.

    It also highlights local content including weather, news, movie times, restaurant recommendations. You can also perform selective searches through WHERE and find out things like where to find the cheapest gas. WHERE will also have the ability to integrate with the Pre contact and calendar data.

    Photobucket allows users to send and upload photos directly from the phone. You can send any photo taken on the phone to a Photobucket album and shared through the website. You can also open a new Photobucket account directly through your Pre.

    Other applications include Zumobi’s Today Show and Sporting News Baseball apps for on-the-go news and sports updates, and LikeMe, which offers personal recommendations for restaurants, attractions, etc, based on your location.

    Beeweeb and Agile Commerce have also announced their plans to offer services to help developers create apps for the Pre and Palm WebOS.

    These new apps join the dozen or so programs that were available in the Pre App Catalog at launch, including Pandora and Fandango.

    According to Palm, more than 150,000 apps were downloaded on the first day the smartphone was available.

    Currently, the Palm App Catalog is in beta and the Mojo SDK is only available to a limited number of developers.

  • HDD Not Threatened by Virtualisation, Claims Western Digital


    Western Digital has dismissed the growing trend of virtualisation among enterprises as a possible threat – and instead emphasised the indispensable value of internal hard drives in businesses.

    Noel Timbol, business development manager at WD, said recent virtualisation efforts undertaken by companies have not made any dent on the sales of their Enterprise models.

    Speaking at the launch of WD’s new line of internal HDD (hard disk drive) products at Computerworld Philippines, he told TechWorld that "even if companies are migrating their data centre operations abroad, they’d still need hard drives for simple internal operations".

    WD is currently the second-largest hard drive manufacturer in the world, and currently leads the market for portable hard drives.

  • Smartphone Market Will Remain Buoyant in 2009


    Lee Williams, chief of the Symbian Foundation, is confident that sales of smartphones will remain buoyant with growth of 12-15 per cent in 2009.

    While his forecast falls short of some estimates which predict 30 per cent increases, it underlines the growing confidence felt in the smartphone sector of the mobile market.

    This is expected to be boosted with the launch of the Palm Pre on June 6th – and the scene is all set for what is likely to be an exciting summer for the smartphone industry.

    Speaking at the Reuters Global Technology summit in Paris earlier this week, Williams said larger display sizes and more memory for media such as music were also encouraging consumers to buy smartphones.

    "For the first time people are realizing you don’t have to carry your digital camera with you and your phone, for the first time people are realizing that you can do your email and access Internet services on your mobile phone," he said.

    Williams’ comments were echoed by Frank Esser chief executive of France’s second-largest mobile operator SFR.

    He said the company was seeing strong demand for smartphones.

    This growth, couple with the contractions taking place in the wider mobile market, will see smartphones becoming increasingly widespread as mass market devices.

    A report just published shows that smartphone sales grew 12.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 despite sharply fallings sales of mobile phones generally – down 9.4 per cent year-on-year.

    Sehat Sutardja, chief executive of Marvell Technology, said smartphones will make up half of the mobile phone market in the next few years.

    He predicted multimedia-enabled smartphones will account for at least 50 per cent of all mobile phones in the next three to four years, and grow even more popular in the following years.

    "Smartphones today are only addressing the tip of the pyramid," he told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.

    "I would say in the next three to four years, at least 50 per cent of the market will move to smartphones."

    Sutardja said this could grow to 90 per cent in six to seven years.

  • Apple Sold 3.8m iPhones in Q1 2009


    iPhone sales have boosted Apple’s quarterly profit by 15 per cent – despite economic woes and a new handset expected later this year.

    The company also said co-founder Steve Jobs intends to return from his medical leave as scheduled at the end of June.

    For the three months ended 28 March, Apple’s second-quarter net profits rose to USD $1.21 billion. In the same period last year Apple earned USD $1.05 billion.

    Apple said it sold 3.8 million iPhones worldwide in the quarter, more than twice as many as a year ago.

    iPhone revenues reached USD $2.2 billion for the quarter – a success that Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook, attributed to strong consumer interest in downloading applications. Apple expects to announce its one billionth app down load tomorrow.

    An estimated combined total of 37 million iPhone and iPod touch’s have created an enormous platform for developers, which he said "unleashes a whole new level of innovation that keeps Apple years ahead of everyone else".

    The popularity of the touchscreen smartphone has also helped the earnings of its exclusive US carrier, AT&T.

    Elsewhere, Apple sold 11 million iPods, up 3 per cent. However, its Macintosh computer line performed less well, with a 3 per cent fall in Mac sales and a 16 per cent drop in revenue.

    Overall, Apple’s average revenue per retail store sank 17 per cent in the quarter.

    Attention will now be focused on how the continuing economic situation – and the launch of Palm’s Pre and various other smartphones – impacts on the iPhone.

  • Strong Q1 Expected from Nokia's 5800 Smartphone


    Nokia’s Q1 sales are expected to be down when accounced tomorrow – despite the success of its 5800 XpressMusic smartphone launched last year.

    Analysts estimate 2.5 million 5800s may have been sold in the first three months of the year – helped by repeated sell-outs in the UK and roll-outs into new markets.

    Key to the Nokia smartphone’s success is its cost – often undercutting the iPhone while offering comprehensive features.

    Despite the device’s strong sales, however, the Finnish mobile giant is expected to report a drop in overall shipments of 20 per cent, with revenues around USD $12.6 billion.

    The company had sales of USD $16.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.

    While Nokia remains the leading global mobile maker, its position has been under fire recently – not least in the smartphone category where the iPhone and BlackBerry have nibbled at its market share.

    However, there may be positive news for Nokia. Some analysts expect the company to announce that it has reduced inventory levels from the fourth quarter of 2008, raising the prospect of an upswing in the second quarter.

    Recent measures have seen Nokia streamline its operations, cutting 1,700 jobs worldwide and temporarily suspending outsourcing for handset manufacturing.

    Nokia is also expected to provide more details tomorrow on reports that its joint venture with Siemens is bidding for parts of Nortel Networks’ CDMA carrier networks business.

  • AppleTV To Get Investment


    Apple reaffirmed support for AppleTV after announcing first quarter sales of the digital media receiver were three times higher than for the same period last year.

    Presenting its Q1 financial results, Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, said they had beaten Wall Street estimates – with revenues surpassing USD $10bn for the first time in the company’s history.

    In the first quarter – which runs from 1 September through 31 December – revenues were up 5.94 per cent to USD $10.17bn and profits up 1.90 per cent to USD $1.61bn.

    When asked about AppleTV, acting CEO Tim Cook was fairly emphatic about the device’s future.

    "We still consider this a hobby, however, it is clear the movie rental business has helped AppleTV and there are more and more customers who want to try it," he said.

    "We fundamentally believe there is something here for us in the future. We will continue to invest in it."

    Strong video sales also helped the iTunes store to a record quarter.

  • Blu-ray Growth Bolsters Dipping DVD Sales


    US consumer spending on packaged home entertainment – rental and sales of DVD and high-def disc formats – fell by 5.5 per cent in 2008, to USD $22.4 billion, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.

    Spending on DVD purchases fell more dramatically than the total, declining by 9 per cent, to about USD $14.5 billion, and the shipment of DVD units was down almost 15 per cent in 2008 to 1.4 Billion

    That contrasts with expenditure on high-def discs, primarily Blu-ray Disc, which almost tripled during the year to reach USD $750 million.

    The figures, compliled by DEG with input from all the major studios, which while still dwarfed by those for DVD show that Blu-ray software shipments grew 250 per cent, to 63.2 million units in 2008, from 18 million units in 2007.

    Sales of Blu-ray players, including videogame consoles, meanwhile, grew to almost 10 million units since the format’s launch.
    The trade group said that in the fourth quarter alone, 3 million devices were sold.

    The DEG figures coincide with a SNL Kagan report that says Blu-ray discs will soon rescue the industry.

    Kagan suggests the growth of Blu-ray will eventually make up for losses in the standard-def category.

    "Retail revenue should start to grow again in 2010. Sales should start a short period of growth as high-definition player prices drop below $200 in 2011 and Blu-ray really begins to penetrate the mass market," Kagan says in its report.

    Blu-ray players in the US dipped under USD $200 at the end of 2008 and Vizio is to launch a USD $199 Blu-ray player in April.

    Kagan said Blu-ray sales represented less than three percent of home video revenue in 2008. But the research firm projects that it will grow to around 19 percent by 2011.

  • Bright Day For Dark Knight Blu-ray Sales


    Warner Brothers’ The Dark Knight has eclisped Iron Man to become the fastest selling Blu-ray Disc movie of all time.

    Approximately 600,000 Blu-ray copies of the movie sold on the first day in the US, Canada and UK.

    This represent 20 per cent of the total three million copies sold during the first 24 hours.

    An estimated one-sixth of the high-def discs were bought in the UK, with most of the remainder presumably being snapped up in the US.

    Warner Brothers is now predicting that it will sell one million BDs by the weekend.

    Iron Man’s day one record had stood at 250,000 BDs.

    Not surprisingly the studio has been quick to talk up what the figures mean for Blu-ray.

    Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, said: "Numbers like these in this economic environment firmly establish Blu-ray as where consumers are headed."