It’s been a rough few years for Sony, with slow sales, natural disasters, and an inefficient business structure getting in the way of profits. But in its third quarter earnings report today, things are finally beginning to brighten up.

Sony reported an operating profit of $534 million, up from a billion dollar operating loss last year. After taxes, Sony still saw a $128 million net loss, but the company is certainly in a better position than it was a year ago. Indeed, Sony feels confident enough in its performance to stick with its 2012 full-year profit forecast of $1.4 billion.

Sales increased by 6.9 percent, mostly due to better sales in its mobile and motion picture segments. While most of Sony’s business saw reduced sales, the mobile segment grew 94.4 percent and its movie segment grew 30 percent. But for Sony to truly turn its ship around, it will need to do something about falling sales in cameras, TVs, and games. (The latter will likely be fixed with the launch of the PlayStation 4, which could hit later this year.)

Photo: Sony chief executive Kaz Hirai by Dean Takahashi

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Despite a sequential quarterly profit dip, AT&T is still succeeding at getting smartphones out the door. In its third quarter earnings report today, AT&T said that it shipped 6.1 million smartphones — which mostly included 4.7 million iPhones. It’s also reporting “record” sales for Android and Windows Phone smartphones.

Selling smartphones is important for AT&T, because it’s also what attracts valuable contract customers. The carrier now has 44.5 million contract customers, up 1.4 million from the last quarter. AT&T added 678,000 net wireless customers, including 151,000 contract subscribers. Overall, smartphone users account for 63.8 percent of its 105.9 million network customers (which also includes prepaid users and those with non-phone wireless devices).

AT&T reported $31.5 billion of consolidated revenue today, but net profits were only $3.64 billion (down from $3.9 billion last quarter). That dip is mostly due to AT&T’s stock buyback plan (which cost $3.8 billion during the quarter) and continued LTE deployment costs. But at least profits were up slightly from $3.62 billion last year.

On a call with investors today, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said that more than a third of customers adopting its mobile share plans are choosing the large 10 gigabyte plan. He noted that the average revenue per user, or ARPU, was much higher for those customers.

For some reason, AT&T created a video starring de la Vega to explain today’s earnings. Check that out below:

Photo: Matt Hollingsworth/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Motorola Mobility announced its third quarter earnings today, with a 20 percent increase in mobile device revenue year over year, but still a loss in operating costs.

“[Mobile device revenue was] driven by continued strong growth in international markets,” said Sanjay Jha, chairman and chief executive officer of Motorola Mobility. “We are also excited about the proposed merger with Google and continue to make progress to close this transaction.”

The company agreed to be acquired by Google in August for $12.5 billion, according to a Google’s quarterly report yesterday. This will help flesh out Google’s mobile division with its first internal hardware selection. Should Google fail to meet regulatory requirements, it will have to pay a fee of $2.5 billion to Motorola.

Here are the highlights of the earnings report:

* Operating costs loss hit $41 million in comparison with last year’s $43 million loss.
* Mobile device revenue topped at $2.4 billion.
* Net revenues overall gained an 11 percent rise year over year at $3.3 billion.
* Home division revenue was $825 million , down 10 percent year over year.
* Within this time frame Motorola announced the global launch of its RAZR smartphone and shipped the Droid Bionic, among other products.