revenue

The semiconductor industry is set to post a revenue drop of $29 billion for this year, according to research firm Gartner.

Worldwide revenue for 2009 totaled $226 billion, down 11.4 percent from 2008, the company said in a research report published on Thursday. It marks only the sixth time in 25 years that the semiconductor industry has posted an annual decline, and is the first time it has seen a drop for two years in a row, according to Gartner.

While revenue fell sharply at the beginning of 2009, carrying on a fall prompted by the economic recession the … Read more

Third-quarter sales of servers across the globe showed a 17.3 percent decline from the same quarter in 2008, sagging to $10.4 billion, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker.

But server shipments improved, falling only 17.9 percent for the quarter, compared with 30.1 percent in the second quarter, noted the IDC report released Wednesday. Even more promising, shipments grew at a healthy 12.4 percent over the second quarter, the market's largest sequential quarterly gain since 2005.

All three server segments tracked by IDC--volume, midrange enterprise, and high-end enterprise--saw lower third-quarter sales compared with … Read more

The Mozilla Foundation's revenue grew 5 percent to $79 million in 2008, with its Firefox search-ad deal with Google still the biggest benefactor, the organization said Thursday.

The figure is notable for an open-source effort, but the growth tapered off significantly. For 2007, by comparison, the Mozilla Foundation reported $75 million in revenue, a 12 percent increase over 2006.

Mozilla Chairman Mitchell Baker revealed the latest Mozilla figures on her blog Thursday.

Update: for further details and commentary from Baker, check this follow-up interview.

Firefox has won over about a quarter of the world's users of Web browsers, … Read more

The chip recovery is under way, with quarterly sales forecast to increase year-over-year for the first time in 2009, according to a report from market researcher iSuppli on Tuesday.

Revenue from chip sales is expected to rise by 10.6 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2008. This would mark the first time this year that revenue has risen compared to the same period a year earlier, according to Dale Ford, senior vice president, market intelligence, for iSuppli.

"The seeds of the current recovery were sown in the second quarter," said Ford. At … Read more

Although there are more signs lately that the worst of the recession is over, Apple is one of the few companies that has seen little of the effects of the recession to begin with.

We'll find out if the company's good health has remained during the quarterly checkup Monday afternoon. According to Wall Street, it's been another good three months for the Cupertino, Calif.-based company. Apple's stock price jumped 43 points during the quarter to close at $185.35. Because of a string of impressive earnings announcements dating back a year ago, the launch of … Read more

Updated at 3:10 p.m. PDT: adding comments from CEO Paul Otellini and CFO Stacy Smith.

Intel's third-quarter revenue jumped $1.4 billion over the second quarter, though year-to-year revenue and profit comparisons were down.

The world's largest chipmaker is struggling to lead the PC industry out of a brutal downturn that saw demand collapse earlier in the year.

Revenue came in at $9.4 billion, beating Wall Street expectations, which hovered at just more than $9 billion. Revenue, however, was down from the $10.2 billion reported in the year-earlier period.

On a year over year … Read more

After a preliminary agreement last week the Financial Accounting Standards Board made it official Wednesday, accepting proposed changes to how companies recognize revenue.

The change will be of particular interest to companies like Apple, which has stuck to a rather bewildering accounting practice of recognizing revenue from sales of the iPhone and Apple TV over a period of two years, or eight financial quarters. The practice was put in place on those two products to avoid charging a fee for every product upgrade--something Apple was told it would need to satisfy accounting regulations that require companies to establish a value … Read more

Though not yet a done deal, a tentative change in accounting rules could have a dramatic effect on the earnings reports of tech companies, and in particular, Apple.

Apple stands to gain a lot from a new draft of rules that governs how companies recognize revenue from subscriptions, as Fortune noted. Though it still needs final approval from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the change could mean that Apple will stop recognizing revenue for its highly successful iPhone over a two-year period, the length of a standard wireless contract, and instead recognize it as soon as a phone is sold. … Read more

Updated at 2:30 p.m. PDT: adding statements from Dell.

Intel and Dell are indicating that PC demand may be increasing but it's not clear how sustained or strong this trend is.

The news Friday that Intel raised guidance is not a surprise, according to Ashok Kumar, an analyst at investment bank Collins Stewart. "It's in line with seasonal trends and reflects strong back-to-school build in the PC food chain," he said.

Kumar added, however, that the strength of actual sales to end users of PCs won't be known until later. "The ramifications … Read more