revenue

Video game sales revenue plummets 31 percent

Revenue from U.S. video game sales dropped 31 percent to $1.17 billion in June, compared with $1.7 billion a year earlier, according to data released Thursday by market research firm NPD Group.

The ongoing economic recession and a lack of blockbuster game title releases were blamed for the drop, the fourth decline in video game sales in as many months.

"This is one of the first months where I think the impact of the economy is clearly reflected in the sales numbers," NPD's Anita Frazier said in a statement. "This level of decline … Read more

Oracle beats expectations as sales, earnings dip

Oracle announced on Tuesday lower fourth-quarter sales and earnings but was encouraged as results beat expectations.

For the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, which ended May 31, the database giant earned $1.9 billion, or 38 cents a share, versus $2 billion, or 39 cents, a year earlier. Sales fell 5 percent to $6.9 billion, compared with $7.2 billion a year ago. However, Wall Street had been predicting revenue of only $6.47 billion.

Oracle noted in its report that results were hurt by the lower value of foreign currencies versus the U.S. dollar. Without that … Read more

Is open source losing its soul?

Early free-software advocates like Richard Stallman raged against the copyright-toting software capitalists, yearning for a brighter day of peace, love, and (GNU) Linux. In 1998, afraid that this quasi-hippie ideal might scare away the business world from embracing free software, Eric Raymond and a few others came up with the term "open source," broadening the tent well beyond free-software radicals.

Today that tent is broad enough to include everyone from Stallman (still fighting the same fight he always has) to Microsoft, with the poignancy of the term "open source" coming to lose some of its fire, … Read more

Pew Center illustrates how Craigslist is killing newspapers

It's tough to compete with free.

The use of online classifieds sites, such as Craigslist, has more than doubled in the past four years, according to a study published Friday by the Pew Research Center. At the same time that Web classifies are on the rise, the classifieds business that newspapers once depended on has collapsed, the Pew Internet & America Life Project found.

"Nearly half (49 percent) of Internet users say they have ever used online classified sites," the Pew Center said in the report. In 2005, the percentage was 22 percent.

One out of 10 … Read more

Biz Stone on Twitter: No ads

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said at the Reuters Technology Summit on Monday that the ubiquitous microblogging start-up isn't considering an advertising-based business model at all.

The whole "we'll make money by offering corporate accounts of some sort" mantra has been talked about by Twitter's founders quite a bit recently. But until this point, Stone and co-founder Evan Williams haven't been quite this explicit in ruling out advertising altogether.

"There are a few reasons why we're not pursuing advertising--one is, it's just not quite as interesting to us," Stone said at … Read more

The platform should be making more than Facebook--for now

You'd think, based on what the blogosphere is saying about dual sets of numbers in Advertising Age and VentureBeat, that Facebook has a new reason to freak out about revenues. Namely, signs point to the fact that the third-party developer platform that Facebook launched two years ago now collectively makes more money than the social network itself.

Well, of course it does.

From some of the headlines, you'd think that it were some sort of Silicon Valley equivalent of humans creating robots that eventually outstrip them in intelligence. While it's sort of amusing to think about Facebook … Read more

SAP software revenue skids in first quarter

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines

SAP's first-quarter software revenue--an indicator of maintenance and services health--skidded 33 percent due to a "difficult operating environment" and a tough year-ago comparison. Meanwhile, SAP altered its maintenance pricing plans to allay customer concerns.

SAP on Wednesday reported first-quarter net income of 204 million euros, down from 242 million euros a year ago. Revenue was 2.39 billion euros, down from 2.46 billion euros a year ago. SAP managed to hold software and software-related service revenue flat at 1.74 billion euros in the first quarter … Read more

Time Warner: AOL's revenue slide continues

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines .

Time Warner's first quarter was weighed down by its AOL unit, which saw revenue fall 23 percent. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes reiterated that the company is looking for "the right ownership structure for AOL."

Here's why: AOL reported first-quarter revenue of $867 million, down 23 percent from a year ago. Subscription (dial-up) revenue fell 27 percent, and advertising sales declined 20 percent. Both declines were expected, and AOL noted that ad sales were weak in all categories (ad networks, display, and search).

Operating income for AOL fell 47 percent to $150 million, which included restructuring costs of $58 million. AOL also ended the quarter with 106 million average U.S. unique users. AOL's dial-up business had 6.3 million subscribers, down 2.4 million from a year ago and 570,000 from the fourth quarter.

Best Buy: Quarter better than expected

Best Buy's fourth quarter was better than anticipated even though profits were down from a year ago amid an economic downturn. The company also noted that the quarter ended stronger than it began, indicating that consumer spending stabilized. And the Circuit City liquidation certainly didn't hurt Best Buy's cause.

The company reported net income of $570 million, or $1.35 a share, on revenue of $14.7 billion. In the same quarter a year a year ago, Best Buy reported net income of $737 million, or $1.71 a share, on revenue of $13.4 billion. Excluding … Read more

At SXSWi, how much should big media be listening?

AUSTIN, Texas--With panels and discussions every year about social engineering, hacking, remixing, and culture jamming, South by Southwest Interactive is the must-attend conference for geeks who want to shake things up.

Maybe that's why the many panels at the conference about the future of media--from print to broadcast to music to film--were tinged with the message that fast, often radical change is necessary. With panel topics like "How Copyright Law Failed The Digital Age," "New Think for Old Publishers," and "Old Media Finds New Voice Through Twitter," this year's SXSWi promised to … Read more