operating expenses

Nokia: Losing the Smartphone War One Ugly Pink Handset at a Time

John Paczkowski in Mobile on June 16, 2010 at 7:16 am PT

Earlier this year, Rick Simonson, outgoing head of Nokia’s mobile phone business, set an ambitious goal for the company: “By 2011…we will be at par with Apple and RIM in smartphones,” he said. “Not only [will] we draw level with them, we will also win the war.” Evidently, pulling that off has proven quite a bit more difficult than Simonson or Nokia imagined. Because this morning, the company slashed its second-quarter financial guidance.

HP’s Next Task: Triple Palm’s Revenue

John Paczkowski in News on May 4, 2010 at 1:30 pm PT

With its acquisition of Palm, Hewlett-Packard gains a turnkey smartphone division, a venture with a slick smartphone operating system, deep mobile patent portfolio, talented R&D team, the beginnings of an app ecosystem and established carrier relationships. Not bad for the $1.2 billion HP paid for it, though the true cost of the acquisition is likely to run quite a bit higher, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore.

AOL: We Need to Fire 2,500 “Volunteers”

Peter Kafka in Media on November 19, 2009 at 5:08 am PT

AOL, which has already told investors it will spend up to $200 million firing a good chunk of its staff, has now told employees. The company is looking for “up to 2,500 volunteers,” CEO Tim Armstrong told his staff today. That’s a third of AOL’s payroll.

YouTube: The Money Pit

John Paczkowski in News on April 3, 2009 at 1:00 pm PT

It’s been well over two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google has yet to truly monetize YouTube. To wit, a report this week from Credit Suisse that predicts YouTube will earn $240 million in revenue in 2009. Which wouldn’t be half bad were it not for the fact that YouTube is on track to lose $470 million in 2009.

Voices

Silicon Motion Cuts Q4 View: Consumer Sales Weakening

Tiernan Ray, Blogger, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily in News on December 22, 2008 at 12:40 pm PT

Shares of Silicon Motion–the Taiwanese maker of chips that control flash memory and computer cameras–are falling after the company this morning said the current quarter’s decline in sales will be much deeper than previously thought, falling 25 to 30 percent sequentially, vs. a prior forecast of 10 percent.