2011 « Funlimited

14Feb

Apple Made $22 Billion In Revenue On Developing World In 2011, Just $1.4B in 2007

CEO Tim Cook described Apple’s conquest of the developing world today at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. He explained “In 2007, and we didn’t launch the iPhone outside the U.S. until 2008, Apple’s revenue combined from greater China and several other parts of asia, India, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America was $1.4 billion. Revenue for that group of countries last year was $22 billion. We’re only on the surface.”

Cook explained that the iPod didn’t take off as quickly in the developing world “because people were already getting music from their phones. But the world changed for us with iPhone. It introduced our brand to people who had never met Apple before.”

“The iPhone is creating a halo for the Macintosh, and for iPads. We see the synergistic effects of the markets not only in the developed markets, but in the emerging markets.” Next, Apple will focus on China, Brazil, and Russia.

In his final statement, Cook talked about his role carrying Apple as the successor to Steve Jobs, “I’m not going to witness or permit the slow undoing of it. Steve grilled into us over the years that the company should revolve around great products and that we should stay extremely focused on a few things…and only go into markets where we can create a significant contribution to society, not just sell a lot of units.”

“We’re always focused on the future. We don’t sit and think about how great things were yesterday.”

[Image Credit: MIT]

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

$1.4B, 'Just, 'made, 2007, 2011, apple, billion, developing, revenue, world.

14Feb

The Best Photographs in 2011 from Vanity Fair

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The Best Photographs in 2011 from Vanity Fair

%counter% The Best Photographs in 2011 from Vanity Fair

The Best Photographs in 2011 from Vanity Fair

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2011, Best., fair, from, photographs, vanity

07Feb

Urbanspoon: Traffic Up 80% In 2011, Mobile Growth Faster Than Web

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Popular restaurant app Urbanspoon is releasing new data today related to its growth over the course of 2011. The company says its traffic is up by 80%, with mobile growth outpacing the web. The site is now seeing 28 million visits per month, with traffic now split roughly half and half between mobile and web.

On the mobile side, Urbanspoon has seen 112% year-over-year growth, while on the web side, it’s at 70% growth over last year. Overall, the company saw 255 million visits in 2011, up from 141 million in 2010.

Across all mobile platforms, including both apps and mobile web, Urbanspoon is seeing 6 million mobile monthly uniques and 10 million mobile monthly visits. The interesting thing about this data is that Urbanspoon can’t always tell when a user hits a particular webpage where that user originated – app or mobile web. That’s because many pages within Urbanspoon’s native mobile applications are actually mobile webpages built using HTML, a decision that the company tells us has been “great for scalability.” (Now to work on improved analytics!).

Urbanspoon attributes its growth to several things, from new features launched over the past year, to its continued focus on improving its mobile experiences. Notably, it launched a food diary / check-in feature called Dineline in recent months. It has also been aggressively going after OpenTable with its Rezbook iPad app that allows restaurants to take reservations directly from the Urbanspoon app and website. As of last month, Urbanspoon had over 1,200 restaurants using this service. (It had just 800 in August).

The company also integrated Zagat reviews in August 2011, just before Google’s September acquisition of the well-known restaurant reviews company. For what it’s worth, there hasn’t been any fallout coming from Zagat’s new ownership in terms of its partnership with Urbanspoon, we’re told. It’s been business as usual.

As for what’s next, Urbanspoon is exploring other ways to help diners “close the loop” with restaurants that extend beyond its bread-and-butter (ha!) offering of restaurant discovery. Reservations and waitlisting are just two of the services the company aims to provide. It’s also exploring ideas like food delivery, customer loyalty programs, and incentives. One of these new transaction types will debut this year. But, cautions Urbanspoon SVP of Publishing Kara Nortman, “when we get into doing something on the loyalty and incentive side, it will be something we consider very carefully.”

The company already allows restaurants to target customers via “Perks” – specials that appear in the reservation flow to entice customers to a particular restaurant. Presumably, the loyalty program could tie those perks to the individual, then reward them for their selection.

In the nearer future (a matter of weeks, in fact), Urbanspoon will deliver new mobile app updates, but specific details on what those will involve will have to wait.

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

2011, faster, Growth, mobile, than, traffic, Urbanspoon

26Jan

Motorola Mobility Closes Out Q4 2011 With An $80 Million Net Loss

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Motorola Mobility released their fourth quarter and year-end financials today, and now we can see why they made it a point earlier this month to downplay analyst expectations. The company’s new figures reveal that while Motorola raked in $3.4 billion in Q4 2011, they also incurred a net loss of $80 million.

Things don’t look much more promising when we shift our attention to their mobile offerings. Motorola’s myriad mobile devices accounted for the lion’s share of their revenue — $2.5 billion to be precise, a year-over-year increase of 5%.

Still, despite pushing out devices like the Droid RAZR and their XYBOARD tablet in time for the holidays, Motorola didn’t see a notable jump over their performance last quarter when during which their mobile devices netted $2.4 billion in revenue.

Also interesting to see is how Motorola stacks up to their mobile competitors when it comes to device shipments. Motorola announced earlier this month that they shipped 10.5 million mobile devices in Q4 2011, down from 11.3 million back in Q4 2010. Of those 10.5 million units shipped 5.3 million were smartphones, which doesn’t sound too shabby until you realize that Android-loving rival Samsung sold 35 million smartphones.

Taiwan-based HTC would probably be the closest in terms of performance — while they didn’t release specific device numbers along with their unaudited quarterly results, Bloomberg’s estimates pegged them at roughly 10 million devices shipped. Coincidentally, both Motorola and HTC have made known their intentions to streamline their smartphone portfolios going forward, and I’m looking forward to seeing how their earnings change as a result.

Stepping back to look at their yearly performance, we find that Motorola Mobility shipped a grand total of 42.4 million mobile devices, which includes 18.7 million smartphones and 1 million tablets. Those in tandem with their (less interesting) home segment offerings led Motorola to pick up net revenues of $13.1 billion, albeit with a net loss of $249 million. Of course, Motorola Mobility’s on the precipice of some drastic change, what with their pending acquisition by Google still churning along. With the transaction expected to finish early this year, we could be looking at a completely different Motorola before too long.

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

'million, 2011, closes, loss, Mobility, motorola

26Jan

AT&T Set Sales Records For Both iPhone And Android Devices In Q4 2011

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AT&T this morning released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011. Consolidated revenues clocked in at $32.5 billion, up 3.6 percent compared to the year-earlier quarter. They recorded a huge net loss for Q4 2011: $6.7 billion, or $1.12 per diluted share.

Zooming in on smartphone sales, it’s worth noting that AT&T delivered its best-ever quarter to date, hands down.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, the company says it sold 9.4 million smartphones, nearly double the number sold in the third quarter and 50 percent more than the previous quarterly record.

This also led to 19.4 percent growth in wireless data revenues, the company said.

During the quarter, more than 7.6 million iPhones were activated, the “majority of which” were iPhone 4S, and AT&T says more than twice as many Android smartphones were sold last quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. AT&T also said it sold 311,000 tablets in Q4 2011.