Amazon's Pumps Every Penny into Growth

Source: Statista

Alibaba Reports Bumper Quarter

Leading e-commerce player Alibaba reported fourth quarter revenue of 34.5 billion yuan (5.33 billion US dollars), an increase of 32% year-on-year. China retail marketplace revenue was 28.7 billion yuan, up 35% year-on-year, while mobile revenue was 18.8 billion, an increase of 192% year-on-year. source: Alibaba statement

Samsung Sees Sales Slip Again

Glossary: CE (Consumer Electronics), IM (IT & Mobile communications), DS (Device Solutions), DP (Display Panel)

In 2015, Samsung Electronics sales slipped 3% to 200.65 trillion Korean won (166 billion US dollars), dragged down by a 6% fall in sales of mobile equipment (mostly smartphones). source: Samsung statement

Facebook's Explosive Growth Continues

The world's leading social network Facebook reported a 52% year-on-year increase in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2015, outstripping the growth of 44% for the year as a whole. Facebook's annual revenue came to 17.9 billion US dollars, of which approximately half was generated in North America. In the fourth quarter, Facebook's revenue would have risen 60% in the fourth quarter, if exchange rates had remained constant. source: Facebook statement

AT&T's Core Business Under Pressure

AT&T reported consolidated revenues of 42.1 billion US dollars for the fourth quarter of 2015, up 22% versus the year-earlier period primarily due to the DIRECTV acquisition. But revenues in its consumer mobility division were down 8% and revenues in its business solutions division were down 3%. source: AT&T statements

Ericsson Hits More Headwinds

Leading network equipment supplier Ericsson reported a 1% year-on-year fall in sales to 73.6 billion Swedish krona (8.6 billion US dollars) on a like-for-like basis for the fourth quarter of 2015.

Hans Vestberg, Ericsson CEO, said: "In North America, the mobile broadband investments remained stable, with additional hardware sales in the quarter. 4G deployments in Mainland China recovered after a weak third quarter. Emerging markets such as India, Indonesia and Mexico remained strong while markets such as Russia, Brazil and parts of the Middle East continued to be weak, mainly due to macro-economic developments. Investments in Europe were driven by the transition from 3G to 4G and capacity enhancements. Operators increased their investments in telecom core networks, driven by deployment of new service offerings such as VoLTE (Voice over LTE)."

Ericsson also noted that its IPR licensing revenues have tripled over the past five years and it now has agreements with the majority of handset suppliers. source: Ericsson statement

Apple Forecasts Double Digit Decline

Apple forecast that its revenue in the quarter ending March 28 will be between 50 billion and 53 billion US dollars, compared with 58 billion dollars in the same quarter of 2015. Revenue of 51.5 billion would represent a year-on-year decline of about 11%. 

For the quarter ending December 26, 2015, Apple reported a 8% year-on-year increase in revenues at constant currencies to 75.9 billion dollars, boosted by 18% growth in Europe and 17% growth in Greater China. Apple also said that one billion iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Apple Watch devices have been engaged with its services within the past 90 days. 

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, noted: “The growth of our Services business accelerated during the quarter to produce record results, and our installed base recently crossed a major milestone of one billion active devices.” source: Apple statement

Verizon Outlines Three Tier Strategy

Verizon reported a 3.2% year-on-year increase in operating revenues for the fourth quarter of 2015 to 34.3 billion US dollars, boosted by the acquisition of AOL.  For the full year, Verizon reported total consolidated revenues of 131.6 billion dollars, up 3.6%. Verizon also said it generated revenues of about 200 million dollars from the Internet of Things in the fourth quarter and 690 million dollars across 2015, an increase of 18% on 2014.

In 2016, Verizon plans capex of between 17.2 billion and 17.7 billion dollars, compared with 17.8 billion dollars in 2015.  Verizon said it is pursuing a three tier strategy based around supplying connectivity, building platforms and providing solutions. It noted that the "acquisitions of AOL and Millennial Media added capabilities that significantly bolster Verizon’s strategy with strong cross-platform consumer and advertising offerings, particularly in mobile and video. In 2015, the company launched the go90 mobile-first social entertainment platform, Custom TV options for Fios customers, the hum direct-to-consumer telematics product, and the Thingspace suite of developer tools to advance the Internet of Things market." Source: Verizon statement

On a conference call with analysts, CFO Fran Shammo said that while Verizon is “encouraged by the use of go90 so far”, he did not expect it to contribute to profit for approximately two years. “Right now, we are more focused on increasing our viewership of go90, rather than it being a profit contributor,” he added. “We see it as an important part of our wider video offering and we are hopeful this will allow us to generate incremental revenue, and develop new and exciting content.” source: Mobile World Live article

Netflix Sees Slight Acceleration Ahead

Netflix forecast that it will generate revenue of 1.81 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2016, a year-on-year increase of almost 30%. That compares with a year-on-year increase of 28% in the fourth quarter to 1.67 billion dollars.

Netflix also predicted that it will add a further 6 million "members" in the first quarter, following an increase of 17 million across the whole of 2015. Netflix said its members streamed 42.5 billion hours of video in 2015, up from 29 billion hours in 2014.  source: Netflix statement

Intel Forecasts Revenue Growth in 2016

Leading chipmaker Intel forecast that its revenues will increase by a mid-to-high single digit percentage in 2016, following the recent acquisition of Altera, which posted revenues of 1.7 billion dollars in 2013. In 2015, Intel's revenues fell 1% to 55.4 billion US dollars. Intel said revenue in its Internet of Things group rose 7% to 2.3 billion dollars. However, revenue in its client computing group, which supplies chips for PCs and tablets, fell 8% to 32.2 billion dollars in 2015. Source: Intel statement

Sharp Slowdown for GoPro

Source: Statista

Xiaomi Sees Modest Shipment Growth

China-based device maker Xiaomi is reported to have shipped 70 million smartphones in 2015, up from 61 million in 2014. source: Mobile World Live article

Xiaomi is one of the companies covered in my report for STL Partners on China's digital disruptors. More information here.

Netflix's International Reach

Source: Statista

For more on Netflix, please see my report for STL Partners: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix: Whose digital content is king?

App Store Generates $20 billion in 2015

Apple said its customers worldwide spent 20 billion US dollars in its App Store in 2015 (about double the equivalent figure in 2013 and up from about 14 billion dollars in 2014). Apple added that the App Store has brought in nearly 40 billion dollars for developers worldwide since 2008, with more than one-third of that figure generated in 2015. source: Apple statement

Smartphones Sales Soar at Huawei

Huawei said its revenue in 2015 was 390 billion Chinese yuan (60.1 billion US dollars), which would represent a year-on-year increase of about 35%. Huawei also noted it invested about 50 billion yuan (about 13% of sales) in research and development in 2015. source: Huawei letter to staff

Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group, said that the company’s consumer business sales grew by nearly 70% in 2015 to more than 20 billion dollars, as it shipped 108 million smartphones—a 44% increase from 2014. source: Wall Street Journal article