Cell Phone, 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 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.

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

The evidence continues to mount that the mobile phone business is evolving into a two-horse race. It’s Apple, Samsung, and a host of desperate hangers on. In the first quarter, according to Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt, Apple accounted for about 80% of all profits in the mobile phone business, with Samsung accounting for the rest. The two companies combined, he figures, had 74% of mobile handset industry revenues.

While the company's new Lumia line of smartphones is gaining traction, those using the older Symbian operating system have lost their appeal.

Moody's ratings agency downgraded Nokia's debt grade to near junk status on Monday, citing a sharp decline in first-quarter cellphone sales that led to a 35 percent fall in revenue.

Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion reports a quarterly loss, due in part to falling revenues on the back of weak smartphone shipments... The firm also suggested it would refocus on the corporate market rather than on individual consumers.

In the third quarter of 2011, Samsung was the king of the smartphone world, with one report showing the domination of the manufacturer overtaking Apple's global reign.