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T-Mobile Revenue Up
May 6, 2016 by admin
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T-Mobile US Inc reported a better-than-expected 10.6 percent rise in quarterly revenue and raised its forecast for customer additions in 2016 as popular discounts aided the No.3 U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers attract more business.
T-Mobile has been offering cheaper leasing plans and free music and video streaming to lure customers away from larger rivals Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc.
T-Mobile, controlled by Deutsche Telekom, said it added 2.2 million customers on a net basis in the first quarter ended March 31.
That easily topped the average analyst estimate of 1.72 million, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.
The company said it expected to add 3.2 million to 3.6 million postpaid customers on a net basis in 2016, compared with its previous forecast of 2.4 million to 3.4 million.
T-Mobile’s 10.6 percent jump in quarterly revenue to $8.6 billion suggested its strategy to boost revenue was working. Analysts on average had expected revenue of $8.43 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
In comparison, market leader Verizon’s operating revenue rose just 0.6 percent to $32.17 billion.
AT&T is scheduled to report results later on Tuesday.
T-Mobile reported net income of $479 million, or 56 cents per share, for the first quarter, compared with a loss of $63 million, or 9 cents per share, a year earlier.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/t-mobile-revenue-up-continues-attracting-new-customers.html
IBM Goes After Groupon
March 14, 2016 by admin
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IBM has filed suit against online deals marketplace Groupon for infringing four of its patents, including two that emerged from Prodigy, the online service launched by IBM and partners ahead of the World Wide Web.
Groupon has built its business model on the use of IBM’s patents, according to the complaint filed Wednesday in the federal court for the District of Delaware. “Despite IBM’s repeated attempts to negotiate, Groupon refuses to take a license, but continues to use IBM’s property,” according to the computing giant, which is asking the court to order Groupon to halt further infringement and pay damages.
IBM alleges that websites under Groupon’s control and its mobile applications use the technology claimed by the patents-in-suit for online local commerce marketplaces to connect merchants to consumers by offering goods and services at a discount.
About a year ago, IBM filed a similar lawsuit around the same patents against online travel company Priceline and three subsidiaries.
To develop the Prodigy online service that IBM launched with partners in the 1980s, the inventors of U.S. patents 5,796,967 and 7,072,849 developed new methods for presenting applications and advertisements in an interactive service that would take advantage of the computing power of each user’s PC and reduce demand on host servers, such as those used by Prodigy, IBM said in its complaint against Groupon.
“The inventors recognized that if applications were structured to be comprised of ‘objects’ of data and program code capable of being processed by a user’s PC, the Prodigy system would be more efficient than conventional systems,” it added.
Groupon is also accused of infringing U.S. Patent No.5,961,601, which was developed to find a better way of preserving state information in Internet communications, such as between an online merchant and a customer, according to IBM. Online merchants can use the state information to keep track of a client’s product and service selections while the client is shopping and then use that information when the client decides to make a purchase, something that stateless Internet communications protocols like HTTP cannot offer, it added.
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/ibm-files-patent-infringement-lawsuit-against-groupon.html
Microsoft Cuts Azure Pricing
Good news for businesses using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform: their infrastructure bills may get somewhat smaller next month.
Microsoft announced that it will be permanently reducing the prices for its Dv2 compute instances by up to 17 percent next month, depending on the type of instance and what it’s being used for. Users will see the greatest savings if they’re running higher performance Linux instances — up to 17 percent lower prices than they’ve been paying previously. Windows instance discounts top out at a 13 percent reduction compared to current prices.
Right now, the exact details of the discount are a little bit vague, but Microsoft says that it will publish full pricing details in February when they go into effect. Dv2 instances are designed for applications that require more compute power and temporary disk performance than Microsoft’s A series instances.
They’re the successor to Azure’s D-series VMs, and come with processors that are 35 percent faster than their predecessors. Greater speed also corresponds to a higher price, but these discounts will make Dv2-series instances more price competitive with their predecessors. That’s good news for price-conscious users, who may be more inclined to reach for the higher-performance instances now that they’ll be cheaper.
The price changes come after Amazon earlier this week introduced scheduled compute instances, which let users pick out a particular time for their workloads to run on a regular basis, and get discounts based on when they decide to use the system. It’s a system that’s designed to help businesses that need computing power for routine tasks at non-peak times get a discount.
Microsoft’s announcement builds on the company’s longstanding history of reducing prices for Azure in keeping with Amazon’s price cuts in order to remain competitive.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/microsoft-to-cut-azure-pricing.html
Microsoft Slashes Surface Pro
Microsoft on slashed the price of its Surface Pro tablet by $100, or between 10% and 11%, dropping the 64GB model to $799 and the 128GB to $899.
The cuts came three weeks after much more dramatic discounts to Microsoft’s Surface RT, which was reduced by up to 30% to prices starting at $349.
Microsoft said that the price cuts would be valid in the U.S. and Canada until August 30, or while supplies last. Discounts were also offered to customers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy — a key Microsoft partner — also was selling the Surface Pro tablets at the lower prices Sunday, as was Staples.
The Surface Pro tablets rely on Windows 8 Pro and Intel processors, rather than the stripped-down Windows RT and lower-powered ARM processors of the Surface RT devices. Surface Pro tablets can run traditional Windows software like the full-featured Office 2013 productivity suite.
While the price cuts were reminiscent of the more aggressive Surface RT discounts, their much smaller size could simply be part of Microsoft’s back-to-school marketing: August is the biggest month for that selling season, which is second only to the end-of-the-year holidays for retailers pushing consumer electronics, personal computers and tablets.
Microsoft is expected to refresh its Surface tablet lines this fall, a notion reinforced by company executives, who have repeatedly pledged that the company is in the tablet business for the long haul. The Surface Pro discounts could be part of the usual push to empty inventory prior to the launch of new models.
The 10% to 11% price cuts were also in line with other hardware makers’ recent discounting. Last month, Best Buy ran a short-term deal that chopped prices of the MacBook Pro by as much as 17%, and for college students, up to 25%.
Is Sprint’s Future Questionable?
August 4, 2011 by admin
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Sprint Nextel Corp’s shares fell sharply on Thursday as heavy subscriber losses in the second quarter called into question the strategy and outlook of the No. 3 U.S. wireless company.
Sprint had spent heavily to promote its service and better compete against larger carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. But that strategy backfired as profit margins eroded and customer losses persisted.
The weak results overshadowed Sprint’s announcement of a $9 billion network contract with start-up LightSquared, and sent the stock tumbling to its lowest point since February before recovering a little to close down 16 percent.
Investors questioned whether Sprint would be able to meet its 2011 targets after such a disappointing showing.
“Their cost of doing business went up dramatically,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen. “People have less confidence they can meet expectations.”
Sprint’s operating profit margin of 16.3 percent was well below the average Wall Street estimate of around 19 percent as the company had changed its product rebate terms in an effort to combat Verizon Wireless’ sale of the Apple Inc iPhone, and an iPhone discount at AT&T.
But the bet did not pay off as Sprint still saw defections of 101,000 net subscribers — also known as post-paid customers — compared with analysts’ expectation for losses of 15,000.