Gadgets, Quarterly Earnings | featured news

Taiwan's HTC expects its second-quarter revenue and operating margin to rise from the first quarter, as sales of the new HTC One smartphone pick up.

The flow of new customers to Sprint stopped in the latest quarter, the company reported Wednesday as it weighed the offers of two corporate suitors. Sprint Nextel Corp., the country's third-largest cellphone carrier, said it added a net of just 12,000 customers to its Sprint brand in the quarter, and it would have lost 252,000 if it wasn't for Nextel customers moving over now that their network is being shut down.

Fresh off its partnership announcement with Facebook last week on the Android-based Facebook Home, HTC had news of a more troubling nature to share with investors Monday — its quarterly earnings report. The company, reported profits had fallen 98 percent from the same period last year to $2.83 million. The Associated Press reported this was the firm’s lowest quarterly profit on record.

Samsung Electronics is expected to announce its Q4 results on January 25. The electronics giant has already given a sneak peek into its earnings, announcing earlier this month that its operating profits grew close to 90% y-o-y to a record 8.8 trillion Won ($8.3 billion) during the holiday quarter.

Apple Inc missed revenue expectations for the third straight quarter after sales of its flagship iPhone came in below Wall Street's targets, driving its shares down 6 percent.

Best Buy Co. reported another dismal quarter on Tuesday, recording a loss in the third quarter, hurt by a continued sales slump and charges related to restructuring. Shares fell more than 11 percent in morning trading to its lowest level in more than a decade.

Samsung sold more than 97 million mobile phones in the third quarter, besting Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone by more than 74 million units. According to Gartner (NYSE: IT), nearly 428 million mobile phones were sold during the quarter. Approximately 23.5 million of those phones were manufactured by Apple — 97.9 million were made by Samsung.

Apple Inc. regained some momentum in its fourth quarter, selling more iPhones than expected while triggering some concerns about the iPad. But the results ratcheted up the pressure on the company for the current holiday quarter. The company is preparing to market a new set of products and is grappling with making enough iPhones.

Research In Motion shares rise in after-hours trading as the maker of the Blackberry posts a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss.

Best Buy's worse-than-expected second-quarter earnings may provide ballast for the company's founder and his hope to buy it back. But the results also raise the question of whether the struggling retailer has time to turn itself around, in public or in private.