Apple Predicts Sluggish Quarter

Apple said its revenues rose 6% year-on-year in the quarter ending December 28th to 57.59 billion US dollars. The rise was fuelled by a 6% increase in iPhone revenues and a 7% rise in iPad revenues. Sales of software, digital content and services were strong, up 19% to 4.4 billion dollars.

Apple forecast its revenue will be between 42 billion and 44 billion dollars in the current quarter. That compares with 43.6 billion dollars in the equivalent quarter of 2012.  source: Apple statement

Samsung Ships One in Four Handsets

source: IDC statement

Samsung Sees Sharp Slowdown

Samsung Electronics reported a 10% year-on-year rise in sales in its IT and mobile communications division to 33.89 trillion Korean won (31.17 billion US dollars) in the fourth quarter. That represents a marked slowdown on previous quarters - across 2013, sales were up 31% to 138.82 trillion won.

Samsung said that it expects demand for smartphones to continue to grow in 2014 with "LTE service expansion in Europe/China and solid demand growth in emerging markets." In the tablet market, it forecast "intensified price competition, amid continued rapid growth in developed and emerging markets." source: Samsung presentation

Nokia Has Another Tough Quarter

Nokia reported a 29% year-on-year fall in revenues in its mobile devices division, which it is selling to Microsoft, in the fourth quarter to 2.63 billion euros. Nokia said the fall was primarily due to "lower mobile phones net sales and, to a lesser extent, lower smart devices net sales. Our mobile phones net sales were affected by competitive industry dynamics, including intense smartphone competition at increasingly lower price points and intense competition at the low end of our product portfolio. Our smart devices net sales were affected by competitive industry dynamics including the strong momentum of competing smartphone platforms, as well as our portfolio transition from Symbian products to Lumia products."  

Nokia also said sales in its networks division, NSN, fell 22% year-on-year in the fourth quarter, partly because of "divestments of businesses not consistent with its strategic focus, as well as the exiting of certain customer contracts and countries. Excluding these two factors, NSN net sales in the fourth quarter 2013 declined by approximately 15% primarily due to reduced wireless infrastructure deployment activity...Additionally, NSN net sales were negatively affected by foreign currency fluctuations." source: Nokia statement 

Verizon's Growth Slows Slightly

Verizon, one of the big two U.S. telcos, said its operating revenues rose 3.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2013 to 31.1 billion U.S. dollars. That was slightly down on the 4.1% annual revenue growth to 120.55 billion dollars in 2013. Still, wireless service revenue climbed 8% in the quarter to 17.7 billion dollars, aided by growing uptake of LTE.

Verizon said it activated a further nine million LTE devices during the quarter taking the total number of LTE devices on its network to more than 42 million. It also reported that its capital spending in 2013 was 16.6 billion dollars, up slightly on the 16.2 billion dollars in 2012. source: Verizon presentation 

Devices and Telecom Services Struggle in 2013

Research firm Gartner said spending on devices (including PCs, ultramobiles, mobile phones and tablets) contracted 1.2% to 669 billion U.S. dollars in 2013, while the global market for IT services grew 1.8% to 922 billion dollars. The telecoms services market shrank by 0.5% in 2013 to 1.63 trillion dollars, according to the research firm.

Gartner lowered its forecast for overall IT spending growth in 2014 to 3.1% from the 3.6% it forecast at the end of the third quarter 2013. "A downward revision of the 2014 forecast growth in spending for telecom services — a segment that accounts for more than 40% of total IT spending — from 1.9% to 1.2% is the main reason behind this overall IT spending growth reduction," said Richard Gordon, managing vice president at Gartner  "A number of factors are involved, including the faster-than-expected growth of wireless-only households, declining voice rates in China and a more frugal usage pattern among European customers. The latter coincides in Western Europe with a breakout of fierce price competition among communications service providers to retain customers and attract new ones." source: Gartner statement

Apple App Store Generates $10 billion in 2013

Apple said that consumers spent over 10 billion U.S. dollars in its App Store in 2013, including more than 1 billion dollars in December alone. The Cupertino-based company added that "App Store customers downloaded almost three billion apps in December making it the most successful month in App Store history." Apple also said developers have now earned 15 billion dollars on the App Store. source: Apple statement

Cisco Cuts Mid-Term Growth Target

Cisco cut its three- to five-year revenue growth target to a range of 3%-6% per annum from 5%-7%. Cisco blamed a downturn in emerging markets, conservative customer spending and stalling growth in its core business of network equipment. source: Reuters article