Apple’s staggering Q1 earnings by the numbers

Apple investors jumped for joy at the company’s first quarter earnings report today, with results that beat high Wall Street expectations. The company earned a record net profit of $13.06 billion on revenue of $46.33 billion and sold a record 37 million iPhone units.

Apple notably missed Wall Street’s expectations for the first time in a long time during its last earnings report. But the company changed the release of its iPhone launch schedule by … Continue Reading

Just Dance video game franchise sells over 25 million units

The Just Dance franchise has sold more than 25 million units worldwide, publisher Ubisoft announced today. That is a huge success for the dancing game series, and demonstrates the continuing demand for more casual games on home video game consoles.

The latest entry in the series of music rhythm games, Just Dance 3, has sold more than 7 million copies since its release in October and has consistently been in the top five on video … Continue Reading

Amazon may miss projected quarterly sales by $300M

Amazon stock stumbled today when a Goldman Sachs analyst estimated the company’s quarterly sales at $17.9 billion rather than the earlier estimate of $18.2 billion.

AMZN, which was trading on the NASDAQ as high as $178 earlier this week, briefly dropped to $167 this morning as analyst Heather Bellini’s note was made public.

As of this writing, AMZN has returned to trading at $173.26. Bellini named a price target — the price at which current … Continue Reading

PlayStation Vita sales see 78% drop during Christmas week

Sales of the PlayStation Vita portable gaming device in Japan have dropped sharply in its second week on the market, according to sales data from Media Create (translated by NeoGAF).

The PS Vita sold an estimated 72,479 units Christmas week, compared to 324,859 units sold in the previous week. That’s a drop of nearly 78 percent. The Vita was outsold by older portable devices like its predecessor, the PlayStation Portable (PSP), and the Nintendo 3DS, … Continue Reading

Xbox 360 sees biggest sales week in its 7-year history

Microsoft today announced it sold more than 960,000 Xbox 360 consoles in the U.S. during the week of Black Friday, making it the biggest sales week in Xbox history.

The company says more than 800,000 of the 960,000 consoles sold this week were sold within a period of 24 hours. More than 750,000 Kinect sensors were also sold this week, both bundled with the 360 console and as a standalone product. The current holiday sales … Continue Reading

Kinect’s first year Japanese sales are disappointingly low

Despite being the fastest selling consumer electronic device of all time , Microsoft’s Kinect gaming device has struggled to make an impact on the Japanese market during its first year on sale. Japanese sales to date have totaled only 114,000 units, according to figures reported by Andriasang. This represents less than a 10 per cent uptake on the device amongst the Japanese Xbox 360 user base.

Kinect’s strongest month in Japan was December 2010, when … Continue Reading

Pepper spray: One more reason to do your Black Friday gadget shopping online

Last night an overzealous shopper at a Walmart near Los Angeles used pepper spray on a crowd in an effort to get at a stash of heavily-discounted Black Friday gadgets.

Around 10:20 on Thanksgiving night, the unidentified woman shot pepper spray inside the store when the coverings were lifted off items she intended to purchase.

“Somehow she was trying to use it to gain an upper hand,” police Lt. Abel Parga told The Associated Press.… Continue Reading

GameStop digital sales increase 59 percent in third quarter

Video game retailer GameStop said in its third quarter 2011 sales and earnings report today that digital sales have grown by 59 percent.

The company launched digital distribution, iDevice and gaming tablet businesses earlier this year and says they are significantly contributing to its gross margin expansion. Console digital sales rose 63 percent, while PC digital sales grew 51 percent. Investment in digital and emerging businesses is part of a long-term strategic plan the company … Continue Reading

Amazon could sell 5M Kindle Fires during holiday shopping season

Amazon is expected to sell as many as 5 million of its new Kindle Fire tablets before the end of 2011.

JPMorgan analyst Douglas Anmuth stated in a research note he thinks the e-commerce company can move 5 million of the Android-based units during Q4.

The 7-inch color, touchscreen, email-fetching, app-running, web-browsing gadget sells for $199, making it the perfect downmarket competitor to the iPad 2, which starts at $499.

And for gift-giving holiday shoppers, … Continue Reading

Relax, Apple will more than make up lost iPhone sales next quarter

Sit down. Take a deep breath. Apple may have missed Wall Street’s mark this quarter — especially for iPhone sales — but given the rate of iPhone 4S sales so far, the company is poised to make us completely forget about this “disappointing” quarter come its next earnings report.

Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones during its fourth quarter — a 21 percent jump from a year ago, but well below the near 20 million units … Continue Reading

Amazon lists all Verizon phones for a penny, except iPhone 4S

Amazon is selling the entire lineup of Verizon Wireless smartphones for a penny each with a 2-year contract this week — all except for the Apple iPhone 4S of course, which is launching today.

This is an great deal for those looking for a 4G-LTE-enabled Android phone on Verizon, such as the truly awesome Motorola Droid Bionic. If you try to buy the Droid Bionic direct from Verizon’s website, the phone costs $300, while the … Continue Reading

iPhone 4S pre-orders top 3M after one weekend, 25M on track this quarter

New estimates from Wall Street analysts suggest Apple registered more than 3 million pre-orders for its newest smartphone, the iPhone 4S, after selling the device for one weekend.

Apple announced this morning it registered pre-orders for more than 1 million iPhone 4S phones in 24 hours, well beyond its previous record of 600,000 phones. New estimates peg the initial weekend’s sales to be somewhere north of 3 million, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike … Continue Reading

Needle sales chat gets big name retailer, looks for new funding (exclusive)

Needle, a crowdsourced sales chat service, announced it has partnered with retailers SkullCandy and Under Armour.

Online shopping has become a staple of our consumer life. Sites like Amazon and eBay reported positive third quarter financial earnings, with Amazon reaching 51 percent net sales over last year. But with all this available product eyeing our wallets, Needle is betting there is need for clarity in whether a brand is right for you.

Needle is, in … Continue Reading

Pardot adds powerful social features into its cloud marketing automation

Pardot on Wednesday announced that it is adding new social networking features into its already strong marketing automation service.

VentureBeat took a little heat last week when it came to the topic of marketing automation after a seemingly innocuous guest post ended up mischaracterizing some of the biggest players in this emerging space. Needless to say, we’re much more in the know about marketing automation and looking to explore how it can help businesses.

Pardot … Continue Reading

Report: Best Buy has more than 240K unsold HP TouchPads

Best Buy has more than 240,000 unsold units of the HP TouchPad in its inventory, indicating that consumers aren’t responding well to the product.

Both HP and Best Buy declined to provide an official comment on this story.

Specifically, Best Buy has sold just 25,000 of its 270,000 initial HP TouchPad stock, according to AllThingsD. The news isn’t terribly surprising after HP permanently cut the TouchPad’s price by $100 about a month after its release. … Continue Reading

Humble Indie Bundle flash sale generates $1M in less than a week

The Humble Indie Bundle, a flash-sale for independently-developed video games run by Y Combinator backed Humble Bundle, has racked up more than $1 million in sales in less than a week.

The company’s last indie game flash sale generated around $1.8 million during its two-week sales period. That means that the current flash sale is on track to exceed the sales of the company’s last flash sale, in large part thanks to increased visibility on … Continue Reading

Samsung Galaxy S II sales hit 5M in 85 days, Americans still jealous

Samsung announced today that sales of its new flagship Android smartphone, the Galaxy S II, have reached 5 million units just 85 days after launching in Asia and Europe in April.

Last year’s Galaxy S phones, smashing successes in their own right, took 125 days to sell the same number of units. Samsung ended up selling 10 million Galaxy S phones last year, but it looks like the Galaxy S II is going to perform … Continue Reading

Updated: Y Combinator-backed Humble Bundle racks up $300k in day one of third indie game sale

Y Combinator-backed Humble Bundle, which bundles together independently-developed games into a single sale that runs for less than a month, has launched its third bundle of games for sale and already made $286,188 in revenue — and it increases about every second.

Humble Bundle gives independent developers a way to publicize their games and compete with the major publishers in an industry that regularly churns out triple-A titles. This bundle’s breakout hit is a 2-D … Continue Reading