revenue

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Best Buy's fourth quarter was better than anticipated even though profits were down from a year ago amid an economic downturn. The company also noted that the quarter ended stronger than it began, indicating that consumer spending stabilized. And the Circuit City liquidation certainly didn't hurt Best Buy's cause.

The company reported net income of $570 million, or $1.35 a share, on revenue of $14.7 billion. In the same quarter a year a year ago, Best Buy reported net income of $737 million, or $1.71 a share, on revenue of $13.4 billion. Excluding … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--With panels and discussions every year about social engineering, hacking, remixing, and culture jamming, South by Southwest Interactive is the must-attend conference for geeks who want to shake things up.

Maybe that's why the many panels at the conference about the future of media--from print to broadcast to music to film--were tinged with the message that fast, often radical change is necessary. With panel topics like "How Copyright Law Failed The Digital Age," "New Think for Old Publishers," and "Old Media Finds New Voice Through Twitter," this year's SXSWi promised to … Read more

Correction, 11:06 a.m. PST: This story initially misstated the day the report was released. It was Friday.

Update at 10:31 a.m. PST, with more information from the analyst report and a chart.

A J.P. Morgan analyst cut his financial estimates for Apple's fiscal second quarter and fiscal 2009 on Friday, pointing to expectations that its iPhone and Mac sales may be weaker than previously anticipated.

Apple fell as low as 7.3 percent in early morning trading Friday to $82.33 a share.

"We are lowering our estimates for the March quarter and … Read more

The Kindle 2 could generate revenue of $305 million and gross profit of up to $70 million for Amazon this year, according to estimates made by investment bank Collins Stewart.

The estimates are just the latest heady Wall Street predictions for the Kindle 2, Amazon's digital book reader. Last month, a Citigroup analyst published a report that predicted the Kindle 2 would generate $1.2 billion in revenue by 2010.

Amazon hasn't broken out financial numbers for the Kindle 2, which made its debut last month.

Collins Stewart estimates that the device will see sales of $1.6 … Read more

Market researchers IDC and Gartner made their cases on Wednesday for worsening chip sales in 2009, with both firms predicting that chip revenue will fall by more than 20 percent.

The worldwide semiconductor market will not recover until 2010, primarily due to a very weak fourth quarter, according to IDC. The market researcher expects a decline in global chip sales of 22 percent in 2009, due, among other things, to low chip factory utilization rates and price erosion.

Memory revenue (DRAM and NAND flash) should stabilize by the second half of 2009, but revenue growth will not return until 2010, … Read more

Online app provider Zoho announced Tuesday that it has added single sign-on support for Zoho CRM, its on-demand customer relationship management app for organizations that run businesses online. According to the company, Zoho CRM users will be able to access all of Zoho's services and won't be prompted to re-authenticate when they switch between applications. Zoho CRM is the last of the company's applications to add single sign-on.

Mio.tv, a company that offers music videos and other entertainment clips for Latin Americans, announced Tuesday that it has acquired Spanish social network Wamba for approximately $5.1 … Read more

Updated at 4:55 a.m. PST with more details from the earnings announcement. Updated again at 7:07 a.m. PST with stock market reaction.

Motorola on Tuesday reported a stunning net loss on tumbling revenue for the fourth quarter.

The net loss for the phone maker in the quarter, which ended December 31, was $3.6 billion, or $1.57 per share, compared with positive earnings of $100 million (4 cents per share) for the same period a year earlier.

All but one penny of the per-share loss stemmed from net charges related to the impairment of goodwill … Read more

RealNetworks said Tuesday that it now expects fourth-quarter revenue of between $151 million and $153 million.

In October, RealNetworks had said it expected fourth-quarter revenue in the range of $150 million to $157 million. Analysts on average have been expecting revenue of about $153.8 million, according to Yahoo Finance.

The revised figure compares with the $157 million in revenue that the digital music company reported in the year-earlier period and would be roughly even with the $152 million logged in the third quarter of 2008.

RealNetworks also expects to report fourth-quarter charges of $227 million to $249 million, about $… Read more