This week has seen the release of corporate financial reports for Q1 of 2012 and, unsurprisingly, there has been extensive coverage of the tech companies’ results on various blogs and websites. I’ve been reading through most of them this morning and have decided to do an ultra short summary of some of the most interesting figures and details for those who don’t fancy reading the results in full. So, without further ado, here is a quick summary of Q1 2012 for the tech industry.
(N.B. Q1 2012, perhaps confusingly, refers to sales and revenue for the 14-week period ending December 31st 2011. The naming refers to when the results are published, i.e. early 2012 – and not the period of economic activity itself – although fiscal years do vary from country to country so this might not hold true for all the examples below – I’ve indicated where there’s a difference).
1. Apple
The obvious starting place since their results have been the most discussed of the lot. In short: scarily good figures, record-breaking in fact. $46.33 billion in revenue ($13.06 billion of which was profit). Share prices have soared yet again and, by way of contextualisation, there’s a good point over at Techcrunch: only 3 companies have ever achieved figures like this before and they were all oil companies. (Unsurprisingly, US mobile network provider and iPhone carrier AT&T also posted a decent quarter with revenues up 3.6% to $1.1 billion).
2. Google
Basically share price falling (from super high to slightly less super high, but remains higher than Apple’s) mainly due to the fact that Google missed some targets despite posting more mega profits. Main worry is about the increasing move to mobile and whether Google can fully translate its profit making aspects (search and Youtube) to this arena, despite the fact that Android tablet market share is up to 39% and will probably soon surpass Apple’s iOS (which runs on the iPad). 2012 will probably be an interesting year in this respect.
3. Nokia
Mixed bag for the company trying to revive their mobile standing through collaboration with Microsoft with Windows Phone models such as the Lumia devices. Note, Nokia is Finnish so their fiscal year is different – these results are for their Q4 (which is the same period as Apple’s Q1). Nokia massively improved on the previous quarter, Q3 2011, but not enough to avoid a significant drop compared with the same quarter in 2010. The Lumia devices are selling well, but apparently this seems to be at the expense of Symbian phones (Nokia’s previous mobile OS). The company registered an operating loss of $1.3 billion. The reports also revealed that Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million to adopt Windows Phone – a figure which had previously been kept secret.
4. Nintendo
Very poor results for Nintendo’s Q3 (again, same time period but different name as Nintendo use the Japanese fiscal year from April to April). Sales are down 31.2% on the equivalent period the year before but there was a big announcement promising a turn-up of fortunes – the follow up to the Wii, the Wii U, will probably be on sale towards the end of 2012.
5. Netflix
Interesting analysis of Netflix, who recently launched in the UK, over at Techcrunch. Though revenues are at an impressive $847 million for the last quarter, the profit margins of the new streaming service (which is the fast-growing side of Netflix) operates with pretty measly profit margins when compared to the much more lucrative DVD side (which is now shrinking in subscribers).
6. AirBnB
OK, so while they’re not a publicly traded company (and don’t release detailed financial reports yet), AirBnB did also release some very interesting data. After registering 4 million overnights in the past year, the company will be opening 6 new international offices (Barcelona, Milan, Copenhagen, Moscow and Paris) and looks set to really break the mainstream in 2012.
There we go, a smattering of highlights from the last fiscal quarter (whatever you want to call it).
