Posts Tagged ‘sales’
Nokia releases ‘Glance Screen’ beta with double-tap to wake as Lumia 925 sales begin
Author: Jamie Colby
Nokia has been working on additional firmware improvements for its Lumia Windows Phone 8 range, and the company is announcing a beta of its “Glance Screen” software on Monday. Glance Screen works as a clock for the standby screen that also provides battery level notifications and a double-tap to wake feature to activate a phone. The feature will always show the clock, even when the device is not in use, and also includes a night mode for when a phone is used in the dark. If the functionality of Glance Screen sounds familiar, that’s because Nokia has taken the feature straight from its old Symbian phones — a platform it dropped in favor of Windows Phone.
Glance Screen launches exclusively on the Lumia 925 initially, and Nokia says it…
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HTC Loses Another Senior Exec As COO Steps Down – But May’s Phone Sales Are One Bright Spot Amid The Gloom
Author: Angela Chin
Troubled Taiwanese mobile maker HTC, which has seen its profits plummet as it struggles to compete in an Android mobile space dominated by its Galaxy-spewing rival Samsung, is losing (yet) another senior executive. Bloomberg reports that Chief Operating Officer Matthew Costello will step down after less than three years at the company. Costello joined HTC in December 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Bloomberg reports that Fred Liu, currently HTC’s president of engineering and operations, will “take on Costello’s responsibilities in an expanded role covering operations, quality, sales operations and services”. The details were in an email to employees obtained by the news agency, which also notes that despite stepping down as COO Costello will stay on as an executive adviser after moving to Europe. We’ve reached out to HTC for comment and will update this story with any response.
Costello’s departure is the latest in a string of senior exec loses at HTC, including its Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Greg Fisher, Chief Product Office Kouji Kodera, Global Communications VP Jason Gordon, Global Retail Marketing Manager Rebecca Rowland, digital marketing chief John Starkweather and Eric Lin, manager of product strategy — all within the past three months. Last November the company also announced the appointment of a new Chief Marketing Officer, Benjamin Ho, to replace John Wang from January, with the aim of turning the marketing noise up on HTC’s innovations.
The company’s prior ‘quietly brilliant’ marketing messaging has fizzled against the onslaught of Samsung’s well-oiled and funded marketing machinery — which is pretty much the opposite of quiet. So it barely seemed to matter that HTC made a cracking Android flagship in the HTC One, arguably the best Android flagship on the market, because selling smartphones has become a game of who can shout the loudest for the longest. A game of brash tones, if you will.
But there’s one bright spot amid all this gloom for HTC. The company has just posted monthly revenues for May showing a 48.03% surge in sales — its best uplift all year (it has, however, been a terrible year for HTC). It’s still 3.35% down year-on-year but considering April’s revenues were down 36.87% that’s a substantial improvement. May’s revenues were NT$ 29 billion ($ 970 million).
Whether HTC can claw back from the brink with one star phone in its portfolio is, however, debatable. Its Facebook Home gamble, with the HTC First, looks to have backfired, as that device has been withdrawn pre-sale in Europe and its position in the U.S. looks perilous. Meanwhile Samsung keeps on firing forth iterations of its Galaxy flagships aimed at saturating the market with differed sized and priced versions of its hardware, leaving even less wiggle room for HTC.
Still, another quietly positive note for HTC is that Google looks to be stepping in to try to help out a little, by offering a Google Edition of the HTC One for sale on its Play Store. After all, an Android ecosystem dominated by Samsung is not without problems for Mountain View — for Android ecosystem health/biodiversity reasons — but also because of the risk that Samsung starts to hold too many of its cards. Whatever Google’s motives, HTC could certainly do with a few friends in high places right now.
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Apple under spotlight as Europe probes carriers for evidence of unfair iPhone sales tactics
Author: jos
The European Commission is scrutinizing Apple’s iPhone sales practices to find out whether the company is unfairly squeezing out competitors, according to the Financial Times. While no formal antitrust probe has been opened, the FT saw a questionnaire sent to several European carriers asking if Apple imposes restrictions such as a minimum number of phones ordered, or a guarantee that the company will never get less favorable subsidies and sales terms than other hardware manufacturers.
The nine-page questionnaire also asks whether Apple is using technical restrictions to limit the iPhone 5′s compatibility with 4G networks, said the FT. “There are also indications that certain technical functions are disabled on certain Apple products in…
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Microsoft targets 25 million more Xbox 360 sales, ‘huge announcement’ planned for E3
Author: Margo Tipton
Microsoft believes it can sell 25 million more Xbox 360s despite announcing the console’s successor, the Xbox One, earlier this week. The Xbox 360 launched back in 2005, and has sold an estimated 77.2 million to date. Growth has slowed significantly in recent months (despite the console outselling the PS3 in the US for over two years straight), and it only sold 1.3 million last quarter. Speaking to the UK’s Official Xbox Magazine, Interactive Entertainment Business Senior VP Yusuf Mehdi said that Microsoft is aiming to sell the additional consoles over the next five years.
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AMD slips to fourth spot as Qualcomm and Samsung capitalize on mobile processor sales
Author: Angela Chin
A fall in demand for desktop PCs and continued growth of the smartphone and tablet market saw AMD fall from second to fourth place for microprocessor sales in 2012. According to a new report from IC Insights, Qualcomm and Samsung overtook AMD to reach second and third spot respectively after they both posted year-on-year growth, thanks to increased sales of their ARM-based mobile processors. Intel continued to dominate the market — despite seeing a 1 percent decline last year.
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Former Google UK exec alleges company misrepresented sales to avoid paying taxes
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Google and other tech companies have come under fire for exploiting a common tax loophole to book revenues through their Irish subsidiaries, but today The Sunday Times is reporting that a former Google UK executive has evidence of further tax avoidance by his one-time employer. Barney Jones worked for Google between 2002 and 2006 and says that during his time at the company, Google relied almost exclusively on its UK sales staff to secure advertising deals in London and elsewhere while the company closed the deals at its Dublin office. Google VP Matt Brittin had previously testified to the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that “nobody” at Google’s UK office was selling Google advertising, revising his statement last week to…
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US Senate passes internet sales tax bill, faces a stiff fight in House
Author: Natalie Wood
The debate over taxing out-of-state online sales in the US has been raging for years, but there are signs that the often messy saga is finally winding to a close… well, maybe. The Senate just voted 69-27 in favor of the Marketplace Fairness Act, a bill that would make internet retailers collect out-of-state sales taxes that Americans are already obligated to pay, but rarely do under a current system that puts the onus on (frequently unaware) buyers. Don’t be too hasty in cheering or jeering the apparent conclusion, however. The bill’s next stop is the House of Representatives, and the reception may be decidedly colder this time around. The act could be submitted to the President this year if it does survive the gauntlet, although a six-month buffer would likely push any tax changes to 2014 if the bill is ever signed into law.
[Image credit: Scrumshus, Wikipedia]
Filed under: Internet
Source: The Washington Times
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Senate passes nationwide online sales tax bill
Author: Stacey Cook
The US Senate has approved a bill that could one day spell the end of sales tax-free online purchases. The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, which the Senate symbolically supported earlier this year and has now passed by a margin of 69 to 27, will give states the authority to collect sales tax from online storefronts, regardless of whether the sellers have a physical presence in the state. Technically, citizens are supposed to estimate and pay internet sales tax on their annual returns, but this is rarely done, leading states to eye Amazon or other sellers as a prime source of uncollected tax revenue.
This bill is a centralized effort to address something states have been working on for years, coming at a time when the online market is…
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Ford hybrid car sales to be higher than ever in US, but Toyota still dominates
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Hybrid car sales in the US have been dominated by Toyota’s Prius family — but that could be changing as demand for Ford’s Fusion and C-Max hybrids continues to sharply rise. Bloomberg reports that the automaker’s share of US hybrid vehicle sales rose from three percent in April 2012 to 18 percent last month. Though Toyota still took in over half of April’s sales, it’s the only manufacturer ahead of Ford at this point. Ford is also on track to beat its own record for yearly hybrid sales — 35,496 vehicles — sometime this month.
Even so, it still has a ways to go to catch up with Toyota. Last year, the Japanese automaker sold over 236,000 hybrids in the US, and according to Bloomberg it expects to sell more than that in 2013. Sales…
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Ford to break its yearly hybrid sales record in the US, seven months early
Author: Ian Simpson
When Ford’s hybrid lineup has been rapidly expanding over the past year, it stands to reason that the company’s sales in the category would take off like an eco-friendly rocket. They have, and faster than you’d expect: the automaker now says it should break its yearly record for US hybrid sales sometime in May, with just under 6,000 cars standing between its current 2013 figures and an all-time high of 35,496 hybrids in 2010. The company has also more clearly established itself as number two, climbing from an estimated three percent of the US hybrid market share last April to 18 percent this year. While Toyota is still the clear frontrunner at 58 percent, Ford is ahead of its Detroit-based rivals — and when Prius sales are soft, the Japanese firm just might be nervous.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Bloomberg
