revenue

Adobe Systems, which is betting on a strong upgrade cycle for its Creative Suite, delivered solid second-quarter earnings and an upbeat outlook. The company added that sales of its latest Creative Suite should be strong through 2010 and into 2011 as large customers upgrade.

The company reported fiscal second-quarter earnings of $148.6 million, or 28 cents a share, on revenue of $943 million, up 34 percent from $704.7 million a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 44 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 42 cents a share on revenue of $905 million.

In a statement, Adobe … Read more

Web advertising is back, but not at AOL: The company says revenue declined 23 percent in the last quarter, with ad sales dropping by 19 percent.

The company reported earnings of 32 cents on revenue of $664 million. Add back one-time charges and you'd get earnings of 79 cents per share.

The Street was looking for revenue of $679 million, and I've seen "consensus" expectations for earnings all over the map--ranging from 34 cents a share (including restructuring charges) to 80 cents (which excludes the charges). The just-announced sale of ICQ doesn't figure into the … Read more

His company publicly derided as a leech of the newspaper business, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a group of newspaper editors he believes newspapers can make money online.

In a keynote speech to open the annual conference of the American Society of News Editors on Sunday, Schmidt lauded newspapers as "fundamental" to democracy and predicted the newspaper business would formulate a new business model based on advertising and subscription revenue, according to an Associated Press report.

"We have a business model problem; we don't have a news problem," Schmidt said, adding that "We're … Read more

Palm's third quarter was a disaster, the fourth-quarter outlook was worse, and the company is stuck with an inventory glut as Verizon Wireless customers went with the BlackBerry Tour and Motorola Droid over the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. The big question: where does Palm go from here?

Simply put, Palm is in a vicious cycle that goes like this:

• Sales in the company's third quarter were weak. So weak that Palm's sell-through in the third quarter was 408,000 units vs. a sell-in of 960,000 units. That means Palm seriously overestimated demand for its devices. … Read more

Ars Technica's Ken Fisher recently wrote an impassioned plea to turn off ad-blocking software like AdBlock Plus to save the online publishing industry. His attempt to turn back the clock on digitization, however, would likely accomplish the opposite.

Fisher has a good point: ad-blocking software almost certainly does hurt sites like CNET by denying them revenue. As he points out, "[m]ost [large] sites...are paid on a per view basis," not a click-through basis, which means that ad-blocking software very literally takes money out of the pockets of publishers, leading consumers to "devastat[e]...the … Read more

Facebook may pull in an excess of $1 billion in revenues, according to estimates and poking around on behalf of industry blog Inside Facebook. That's an increase from the same publication's estimate of $700 million last year.

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said last year that he projected the company would break $500 million revenue in 2009, and that it had the potential to be a billion-dollar company already, but that it was acting conservatively.

(Naturally, Facebook says that as a privately held company it doesn't disclose its financials.)

What can Facebook credit this big jump in … Read more

Following a rough 2009, global sales of semiconductors are expected to rise nearly 20 percent this year, according to research released this week by Gartner.

Sales are projected to hit $276 billion this year, an increase of nearly 20 percent, compared with $231 billion last year. The boost in revenue will come courtesy of rising DRAM (dynamic random access memory) prices as well as greater consumer demand for personal computers. Commonly used in PCs, DRAM is likely to be the fastest growing type of chip, with DRAM sales alone shooting up 55 percent this year, according to Gartner.

The semiconductor … Read more

Palm's smartphone recovery took a big hit Thursday as the company sharply cut its outlook for the third quarter and fiscal 2010 because "driving broad consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated."

How ugly is it? Palm said its third-quarter revenue will be $285 million to $310 million under generally accepted accounting principles. Non-GAAP revenue will be $300 million to $320 million.

The problem: Wall Street is looking for revenue of $424.7 million.

For fiscal 2010, Palm also said its revenue will be "well below its previously forecasted range of $1.… Read more

EMC's fourth quarter closed strong as both earnings and revenue came in ahead of expectations. The company also raised its outlook for 2010.

The storage giant reported fourth quarter net income of $426.5 million, or 20 cents a share, on revenue of $4.1 billion, up 2 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings in the fourth quarter were $695.5 million, or 33 cents a share.

Wall Street was expecting earnings of 30 cents a share on revenue of $4.02 billion. For 2009, EMC reported net income of $1.1 billion, or 55 cents a share, … Read more