growth

AT&T sold twice as many iPhone 5 smartphones as its main competitor, according to mobility chief Ralph de la Vega.

AT&T's closest rival, Verizon Wireless, said last week that it sold 651,000 iPhone 5 units in the third quarter. Based on de la Vega's statement, this means AT&T rang up sales of roughly 1.3 million units. Sprint Nextel reports its results on Thursday.

AT&T further cemented its lead as the preeminent iPhone carrier in the U.S. with 4.7 million iPhones sold in the third quarter. But … Read more

Many people believe Facebook's growth is slowing down, but the raw numbers seem to tell a different story.

The world's largest social network recently celebrated a major milestone: 1 billion monthly active users. It took the company eight years -- or more specifically 105 months -- to reach the historic mark.

The milestone made me curious: is Facebook's growth stalling, or does it still have some fight in it left? Could Facebook reach 1.1 billion users early next year? What about 1.5 billion users in four? Two billion users in eight?

In order to better … Read more

Just how big is the expected release this Wednesday of the iPhone 5? How about big enough to show up in U.S. GDP growth and account for a sizable chunk of global chip revenues.

Adds to U.S GDP: Let's start with the U.S. economy. "We believe the release of iPhone 5 could potentially add between 1/4 to 1/2 percent-point to fourth quarter annualized [gross domestic product] growth," said JP Morgan in a research note today.

The note continued. "Our equity analysts believe around 8 million iPhone 5's will be sold … Read more

The traditional PC market is in dire need of some hot new products to drive growth. Too bad that's probably not going to happen soon, according to market researcher IDC.

The worldwide PC market has basically slowed to a crawl this year, IDC says in a report released today. It expects just 0.9 percent growth this year, the second consecutive year of growth below two percent.

While citing the usual macroeconomic culprits -- slowness in Asia and mature markets -- the report said consumers are "considering spending on other products like media tablets and smartphones" while … Read more

Those days of users spending countless hours on Facebook, poking, posting photos, and updating their statuses seem to be ending. And if not ending, they're definitely slowing.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the social network's growth rate in the U.S. has pretty much stopped in its tracks. However, this must be taken in the context of Facebook's stupendous growth since its inception eight years ago -- up front the numbers don't look that bad, but studied more closely it could look troublesome for the social network.

Unique visitors to the site were up 5 … Read more

AT&T remains the king of the iPhone, but that distinction means less with each passing quarter.

The Dallas telecommunications giant sold 4.3 million iPhones in the first quarter, more than 1 million more than Verizon Wireless, and almost certainly more than Sprint Nextel, which sold 1.8 million in the fourth quarter at the height of the iPhone 4S buzz.

So why did AT&T only add a fraction of the contract customers that Verizon nabbed in the same period?

The results highlight an increasingly alarming trend with the wireless carriers: the decreasing benefit that the … Read more

Path takes a wrong turn, Yahoo's board gets new faces, and Amazon Instant Video adds Viacom content.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Tumblr is on a roll.

The company's founder and CEO David Karp spoke at the Digital Life Design (DLD) Conference in Munich earlier today, and revealed that Tumblr is visited by over 120 million unique users each month, helping it tally over 15 billion monthly pageviews. What's more, the nearly 42 million microblogs currently in operation are re-blogged via RSS, Twitter, and Facebook an average of nine times, dramatically expanding their footprint across the Web.

The Next Web was the first to report on Karp's comments.

Just four months ago, Tumblr announced that it was generating 13 … Read more

Hard drive shortages and weak sales slow down the PC market, HTC announces phones that will get the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update, and Barnes & Noble takes on the Kindle with a new lineup, including the Nook Tablet and Nook Simple Touch.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded: