Motorola Mobility reported net revenues of $3.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, up 21 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009. The GAAP earnings in the fourth quarter of 2010 were $80 million (.27 per share), compared to a loss of $204 million (.69 per share) in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Smartphone News
Apple announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 first quarter ended December 25, 2010. Record Mac, iPhone, iPad sales have driven highest revenue and earnings ever: the company posted record revenue of $26.74 billion and record net quarterly profit of $6 billion ($6.43 per diluted share).
According to Millennial Media’s Mobile Mix Index, for the first time Android surpassed iOS as the largest smartphone operating system on Millennial Media’s network last month, with an 8% month-over-month increase and 46% of the impression share.
Verizon Wireless and Apple have just announced that the iPhone 4 will be available on the Verizon network beginning on Thursday, February 10. Verizon customers will be given the opportunity to pre-order CDMA iPhone 4 online on February 3, ahead of general availability.
US-based online retailer Amazon has opened its mobile application store to submissions from developers. The Amazon "Appstore" is due to launch in the US during 2011 and will be available for Android devices that run versions 1.6 of the operating system and above.
comScore has released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending November 2010. After several months of strong growth, Google Android captured the #2 ranking among smartphone platforms with 26.0 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers.
AT&T and Qualcomm announced that AT&T has agreed to purchase spectrum licenses in the Lower 700 MHz frequency band from Qualcomm for $1.925 billion. According to AT&T, the move "will bolster the company’s ability to provide an advanced 4G mobile broadband experience for its customers in the years ahead."
Broadcom has announced a new baseband platform that provides simultaneous HSDPA modem connectivity and Android-based applications processing. According to the company, the new Broadcom BCM2157 dual-core baseband processor delivers high-end smartphone features on more affordable 3G Android handsets: this includes mobile hot-spot, multi-touch screens, innovative media and applications processing, "and other capabilities that will help handset makers drive these features to a larger tier of users."
Highlighted by their adoption in Apple’s iPhone 4, microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microphones are set to achieve a more than 50 percent increase in shipments in 2010 and a fourfold rise by 2014, according to the market research firm iSuppli.
Texas Instruments announced that the OMAP4440 applications processor enhancements deliver "impressive performance improvements" beyond the OMAP4430 processor, including a 1.25x increase in graphics performance, a 30 percent decrease in webpage load time, a 2x increase in 1080p video playback performance and clock speeds as fast as 1.5 GHz per ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore.