All Entries Tagged With: "billion"

Twenty Billion Twitter Tweets And Counting

According to unofficial Tweet counter GigaTweet, it would appear as if Twitter has traversed the twenty billion Tweet marker as of Saturday, with the official tweet written in … not English.

One could argue that GigaTweet is not completely accurate, but cannot deny that Twitter continues to grow at an entirely impressive pace. Data suggests that the 15 billionth Tweet was transmitted approximately two months ago, and the 10 billionth Tweet transmitted roughly five months ago.

Verizon Announces Q2 2010 Financial Earnings

New York City-based Verizon Communications announced today its financial earnings for the second quarter of 2010, which ended on June 30 of this year. As a consolidated company, Verizon managed to make $26.8 billion in revenue during the three-month period. That’s a 0.3% decrease when compared to the $26.9 billion made in revenue during the same period last year. In terms of net income, the company made $1.5 billion, which is a 51% decrease from the $3.2 billion made in Q2 2009.

Now, Verizon Wireless, which is owned by both Verizon Communications and Vodafone, reported a strong revenue of $16 billion. That’s a 3.4% increase from the $15.4 billion made in Q2 2009. In addition, Verizon Wireless managed to get 1.4 million new subscribers during the quarter. In total, the company now has 92.1 million subscribers. Operating income ended up at $4.8 billion. That’s a 8.6% increase from the $4.5 billion during the same period last year. Operating Income Margin went up 2.5% from 28.8% in Q2 2009 to 30.3% last quarter.

For more information, check out the official press release by Verizon.

Microsoft Reports Record Breaking Q4 2010 Earnings

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft announced once again record-breaking earnings today from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010, which ended on June 30 of this year. The company made a whopping $16.04 billion in revenue during the three-month period. That’s a 22% increase from the $13.1 billion made in revenue during the same period last year. In comparison, Microsoft made $14.5 billion in the previous quarter of this year [Q3 2010].

In terms of net income, the company reports making $4.52 billion, or $0.52 per diluted share. That’s a 48% increase from the $3 billion in net income, or $0.34 per diluted share, reported during the same three-month period last year. In comparison, Microsoft made $4.01 in net income, or $0.45 per diluted share, in the previous quarter. Operating income went up from $3.98 billion in Q4 2009 to $5.93 billion last quarter.

Considering this is the end of its fiscal year, Microsoft reports making $62.48 billion in revenue during the entire twelve-month period, which also ended on June 30. A 7% increase from the $58.43 billion made in fiscal 2009. Net income ended at $18.76 billion, or $2.10 per diluted share. That’s a 29% increase from the $14.56 billion, or $1.63 per diluted share, reported at the end of fiscal 2009. Operating income went up from to $20.3 billion at the end of fiscal 2009 to $24.10 billion this year.

Microsoft reports that 175 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold to date.

For more information, check out the official press release by Microsoft or the presentation embedded in the full post.

Google Announces Q2 2010 Earnings

Mountain View-based Google announced today its earnings from the second quarter of 2010, which ended on June 30 of this year. The company reported making $6.82 billion in revenue during the quarter. That’s a 24% increase compared to the same period last year, in which the company made $5.52 billion. In comparison, the company made $6.77 billion in revenue last quarter [Q1 2010], which indicates an increase or just 1% during the three-month period.

Google-owned sites account for $4.50 billion or 66% of total revenue. That’s a  23% increase from the same period last year, in which Google-owned sites made $3.65 billion. Google also reports making $1.84 billion in GAAP net income during Q2 2010. In comparison, the company made $1.48 billion in GAAP net income in the second quarter of 2009. Additionally, Google reports paying $1.73 billion in TAC [Traffic Acquisition Costs], which is a payment to its partners, during the quarter.

With that said, the company now has $30.1 billion in cash. That’s over $4 billion more than the $26.5 billion reported last quarter. Also, the company now employs 21,805 individuals. In comparison, the company had 20,621 full-time employees in Q1 2010.

For more information, check out the complete press release in the full post.

Mozilla Firefox Add-On Downloads Surpass Two Billion

Did you know that over one hundred and fifty million Firefox add-ons are in use at least once every single day? There’s an add-on for just about everything; from RSS feed readers to website screenshot takers — it’s all there.

So with the amount of add-ons in use, it should be no surprise that the 2 billionth download of a Firefox add-on has taken place as of recent, nearly 20 months after the first billion add-ons were downloaded in November of 2008. If you thought that rate was slow, however, think again; it took over 3 and a half years for the first billion add-ons to be downloaded (note: download figures are cumulative).

To celebrate the occasion, Mozilla’s pieced together a collection of the “best” of the add-ons available for the web browser. Among them; Adblock Plus, WeatherBug, and StumbleUpon. The full list can be found here.

Microsoft Reports Record Breaking Q3 2010 Earnings

Microsoft reported today its Q3 fiscal 2010 earnings, which ended on March 31, 2010. Just like Apple did a few days ago, Microsoft also managed to beat expectations. Anyway, Microsoft reportedly made $14.50 billion in revenue and $4.01 in profit during the quarter, which are a 6% and 35% increase respectively from the same period last year. Those figures equal to $0.45 per share, a 36% increase from last year. The company also saw its operating income go up by 17%, ending at $5.17 billion.

Microsoft states that Windows sales were up 28% to $4.4 billion, thanks to high demand for Windows 7, which is now installed in more than 10% of all PCs around the world.

As far as online services go, revenue was up 12% to $566 million. The Online Services Division lost $713 million in operating income. Ad revenue grew by 19% thanks to search. The Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes products like the Xbox and Zune HD, made $165 million in operating income and $1.7 billion in revenue.

The company reports having $39.666 billion in cash.

Check out a presentation after the break.

Apple Reports Its Record Breaking Q2 2010 Earnings

Apple just released its fiscal Q2 2010 earnings, which ended on March 27, 2010. The company has once again broken its own estimates, and those of Wall Street analysts. Apple reportedly made $13.50 billion in revenues and $3.07 billion in net profit last quarter. That equals to $3.33 per diluted share. Wall Street estimated that only $12.04 billion were going to be made in revenue with $2.45 per diluted share. Apple estimated to make from $11 billion to $11.4 billion in revenue with $2.06 to $2.18 per diluted share. The company also managed to break its own record. In the same quarter last year, Apple reported $9.08 billion in revenue with $1.79 per diluted share.

The Cupertino-based company also reported that 2.94 million Mac computers were sold in the quarter. That’s a 33% increase from the same quarter last year. 8.75 million iPhones and 10.89 million iPods were sold in the quarter. Both products saw a 131% increase and a 1% decrease from the same quarter the previous year.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs stated:

“We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent… We’ve launched our revolutionary new iPad and users are loving it, and we have several more extraordinary products in the pipeline for this year.” 

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer expects revenue in fiscal Q3 2010 to be between $13 billion and $13.4 billion. Do take into account that Apple usually estimates low figures, so you shouldn’t be surprised if the company beats its own estimates once again in the next quarter.

Full press release after the break.

Let’s Count Tweets: We’re Almost At 10 Billion

If you use Twitter, you’re contributing to the next major milestone on our collective home, the interwebz. Roughly one year ago, popular micro-blogging service Twitter reached what you could call its first major milestone — one billion tweets. In mid-October of 2009, we reported that Twitter’s “tweet count” was fast approaching five billion. Impressive, eh?

In approximately one day, Twitter’s expected to fly past the ten billion tweet marker, signaling to the world the website is still very much in the minds of internet users, and not loosing some of its “oomph” as many would claim (we’re Switzerland in this case — not taking sides).

Apple iTunes Store To Hit 10 Billion Downloads Soon

9.99 billion. The number represents the amount of songs downloaded to date on Apple’s iTunes platform, and it’s quickly expected to strike the 10 billion milestone later today/early Thursday, at the rate it’s currently going. As we’ve mentioned before, he/she who is lucky enough to download the 10-billionth song will receive $10,000 in iTunes store credit — less than what Apple gave away for the one billionth app downloaded, which included $10,000 in iTunes store credit, an iPod Touch, and a MacBook Pro.

At the current rate, the counter displays over 100 downloads per second, which could or could not be factual — but don’t time your iTunes purchase by what you see on the site — it’s based on a calculation and does not actually count in real-time.

Just sayin’.