Samsung Pins Smartphone Hopes on S6

Samsung Electronics reported a 20% year-on-year fall in revenues in its IT and mobile division to 25.89 trillion Korean won (24.3 billion US dollars) for the first quarter of 2015. That represents a slight improvement on the 22% decline in the fourth quarter of 2014.

In the second quarter, Samsung said it expects "earnings improvement led by increased high-end sales with S6 global expansion, while smartphone shipments to remain at similar level due to decreased mid/low-end sales. Expect marketing expenses to increase due to S6 expansion." source: Samsung statement

Apple Expects Strong Growth to Continue

Apple forecast its revenues will rise by between 23% and 28% year-on-year in the quarter ending June 28 to between 46 billion and 48 billion US dollars. In the quarter ending March 28, Apple's revenues rose 27% year-on-year, fuelled by a 55% increase in iPhone revenues, more than offsetting a 29% decline in iPad revenues.

“We’re seeing a higher rate of people switching to iPhone than we’ve experienced in previous cycles, and we’re off to an exciting start to the June quarter with the launch of Apple Watch,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. source: Apple statement

NTT DOCOMO's Sales Slip Again

NTT DOCOMO reported a fall of almost 2% in operating revenues in the year to March 31, 2015 to 4.38 trillion Japanese yen (37 billion US dollars). The Japanese telco blamed the decline on new discounts and new billing plans it introduced to fend off mounting competition. source: NTT DOCOMO statement

Orange Sales Slip Again

Mexican Regulation Hits América Móvil

América Móvil reported a 1% year-on-year rise in service revenues at constant exchange rates to almost 194 billion Mexican pesos (12.6 billion US dollars) in the first quarter. The group said: "The deceleration observed by service revenues reflects, among other things, the impact of the various regulatory measures implemented in Mexico including the elimination of termination charges for calls that terminate on our networks, and of national roaming and long distance charges (the latter ones from January 1st) on both the mobile and fixed-line platforms."

"The South American block continued to be the main driver of service revenue growth—4.6% year on year at constant exchange rates—followed by Central America and the Caribbean with 3.8%. whereas in Mexico they were down 6% on account of the measures mentioned above. In the US, service revenues rose 7.3% and in Europe they were flat (at constant exchange rates)." source: América Móvil statement

Google Claims Growth in Mobile and Video

Google said revenues grew 17% year-on-year, excluding the impact of currency movements, to 17.3 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2015.  The number of paid clicks on the ads Google brokers rose 13% year-on-year, but the average cost per click fell 7%. source: Google statement

Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette highlighted mobile ads as a key source of revenue growth during the quarter. "We are experiencing real strength in mobile search," he said. The contribution of ad revenue from video platform YouTube "continues to grow at a strong rate year-over year," he added. Brands are embracing YouTube's TrueView service, where advertisers pay only when users opt not to skip an ad, he said. source: Reuters

Cloud Growth Lifts Microsoft

Microsoft reported a 11% year-on-year rise, at constant currencies, in device and consumer revenue to 9 billion US dollars for the quarter ended March 31. The software giant said it now has 12.4 million Office 365 consumer subscribers, up 35% quarter-on-quarter. Microsoft claimed that Bing now has 20% share of the US search market (up 150 basis points year-on-year), helping fuel a 24% rise in search advertising revenue at constant currencies. Revenue from its Surface range of tablets rose 53% to 713 million dollars, but Windows Phone revenue declined 16%.

Microsoft also reported a 7% rise in commercial revenue, at constant currencies, to 12.8 billion dollars for the quarter. Commercial cloud revenue rose 111% driven by rising sales of Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online, it added. source: Microsoft statement

North American Slowdown Hits Ericsson

Ericsson reported a 6% year-on-year fall in revenues in the first quarter of 2015 in organic terms to 53.5 billion Swedish krona (6.4 billion US dollars). Networks sales fell 9% held back by slow demand for mobile broadband in North America, while sales in the global services division declined 2%.

Ericsson said: "With current visibility we anticipate the fast pace of 4G deployments in mainland China to continue and the North American mobile broadband business to remain slow in the short term." source: Ericsson presentation

Falling Wireless Service Revenues Hit AT&T

AT&T reported a 1% year-on-year increase in revenues on a like-for-like basis to almost 33 billion US dollars for the first quarter of 2015. A 2% rise in wireless revenues (driven by a 36% increase in wireless equipment revenues) was offset by a 1% decline in wireline revenues.

AT&T said that wireless service revenues were down almost 4% to 14.8 billion dollars "reflecting continued customer growth of Mobile Share Value plans partially offset by increased revenues from Cricket." AT&T noted that it added 680,000 connected cars in the quarter. source: AT&T statement

Facebook's Capex Set to Rise Faster than Revenues

Facebook said its revenue in the first quarter of 2015 increased by 49% year-on-year to 3.5 billion US dollars, excluding the impact of year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates.

"In March, approximately 1.25 billion people accessed Facebook on mobile devices, up 24% from last year," said Dave Wehner, CFO of Facebook. "In addition to Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp continue to grow, exceeding 300 million, 600 million and 800 million monthly active users respectively."

Wehner predicted that Facebook's capital expenditure is likely to "be in the neighborhood" of 2.7 billion to 3.2 billion dollars in 2015, up from 1.8 billion in 2014. source: Facebook statement

Strong Equipment Sales Shore up Verizon

Verizon reported a 4% year-on-year rise in revenue to 32 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2015. However, wireless service revenues fell 0.4% to 17.9 billion dollars despite a 25% increase in M2M revenues to 150 million dollars. Verizon said: "Equipment revenues increased 1.5 billion dollars, compared with first-quarter 2014, as more customers chose Verizon Edge pricing. This pricing makes it easy to buy a new device with a low upfront cost and simple monthly instalments."

Verizon also reported that 4G devices now constitute approximately 70% of its retail postpaid connections base, up from 49% a year ago – with the 4G LTE network handling about 86% of total wireless data traffic in first-quarter 2015. source: Verizon statement

China Mobile Returns to Growth

China Mobile reported operating revenues of 161 billion Chinese yuan (26 billion US dollars) for the first quarter of 2015, representing a year-on-year rise of almost 4%. In the fourth quarter of 2014, revenue fell by 4% year-on-year.  The company added 8.75 million connections in the quarter, taking its total connections base to more than 815 million.

China Mobile also said it now has more than 143 million 4G customers, up from 3 million a year ago. Although the number of SMS messages sent by customers fell 4% and voice traffic 1% year-on-year, mobile data traffic rose by 158%. source: China Mobile operating data