Posts Tagged: revenue

Instacart cuts 250 jobs after reporting increased revenue

Another day, another layoff occuring in the tech world. Instacart, the popular grocery delivery and pick-up service has announced the termination of 250 employees — about seven percent of its workforce. The layoffs are primarily individuals in management, as Instacart told Engadget that it was moving towards a flatter organization. The company also said that it was disbanding some teams working on smaller projects in favor of focusing on bigger bets like retail-powered media and off-platform ads. Most of the layoffs will go into effect by March 31 with Instacart estimating that the process will cost the company between $ 19 million and $ 24 million due to factors like severance pay and employee benefits.

Instacart released the news along with its fourth-quarter earnings. Despite choosing to layoff employees, the company reported a six percent increase in revenue, jumping from $ 803 million to $ 804 million, year-over-year. At the same time, Instacart is seeing the voluntary departure of three of its executives: the chief operating officer, chief technology officer and chief architect.

The layoffs follow only a short time after Instacart's September 2023 IPO. Unlike many companies that barely (or didn't) survive the COVID-19 pandemic, Instacart thrived. It allowed people to stay and still receive their groceries and other necessary items. Now, it exists in 5,500 cities and, like most companies of the past year, is focusing on building its AI capabilities. But, despite its increased revenue, the company's layoffs signal that not everything is going as planned over at Instacart

Update, Feb 14 2024, 5:45PM ET: This story has been updated with additional details from Instacart about the parts of the organization affected, and to note that Instacart primarily isn't letting people go who are working on their ads products. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instacart-cuts-250-jobs-after-reporting-increased-revenue-112503431.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Apple sold enough iPhones and services last quarter to reverse a downward revenue trend

After four consecutive quarters of revenue decline, Apple broke the trend and reported its first period of revenue growth today. In its earnings report for the first quarter of the financial year of 2024, the company announced a quarterly revenue of $ 119.6 billion, which is an increase of 2 percent from the same period last year. 

In addition, Apple CEO Tim Cook said its “installed base of active devices has now surpassed 2.2 billion, reaching an all-time high across all products and geographic segments.” This quarter includes money brought in from the sales of the iPhone 15 line introduced in September 2023, which had an obvious impact on performance. 

“Today Apple is reporting revenue growth for the December quarter fueled by iPhone sales, and an all-time revenue record in Services,” Cook said. He noted the company hitting “all-time revenue records across advertising, Cloud services, payment services and video as well as December quarter records in App Store and Apple Care.” Cook recapped some updates made to the Apple TV app, as well as TV+ content earning nominations and awards. 

Cook went on to remind us during the company’s earnings call that tomorrow is the launch day for the Vision Pro headset, calling it historic. After saying that Apple is dedicated to investing in new technologies, Cook added that the company will be sharing more about its developments in AI later this year. 

Products in the wearables, home and accessories categories didn’t fare well in this quarter, though sales in the Mac department did increase year over year. iPad sales in particular dropped 25 percent over the same period last year, though Cook attributed that to a “difficult compare” to the big numbers recorded in the first quarter of 2023 due to new models with refreshed Apple Silicon. Considering the company did not release a new iPad model in 2023 at all, this is not surprising. 

Cook continued by highlighting developments like Apple opening its 100th retail location in Asia Pacific and updates on its sustainability efforts. He wrapped up by saying “Apple is a company that has never shied away from big challenges,” adding “so we’re optimistic about the future, confident in the long term and as excited as we’ve ever been to deliver for our users.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-sold-enough-iphones-and-services-last-quarter-to-reverse-a-downward-revenue-trend-223109289.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Apple reportedly tried to partner with Facebook to get a cut of its revenue

Facebook and Apple have been at odds for several years now; Apple announced back at WWDC 2020 that iOS would require apps to ask users to opt-in to cross-app advertising tracking. Facebook spent much of the next months speaking out against Apple's plans and predicting revenue instability due to the upcoming changes, but the feature was released in iOS 14.5 back in April of 2021. Somewhat surprisingly, though, a new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that before this all went down, Facebook and Apple were working on a partnership and revenue-sharing agreement.

According to the Journal, Apple and Facebook were considering a a subscription service that would offer an ad-free version of the platform. And since Apple takes a cut of in-app purchases, including subscriptions, it could have been a very lucrative arrangement indeed. 

Another arrangement that was discussed and ended up being a point of contention was Apple taking a cut of "boosted posts," which essentially amounts to paying to put a post in front of a larger audience. Facebook has long considered boosted posts part of its advertising portfolio; as the Journal notes, small businesses often use boosted posts to reach more people. The issue came down to Apple saying boosts should be considered in-app purchases, which would be subject to the 30 percent revenue cut that the company takes. Facebook, on the other hand, maintained that those were advertising products which aren't subject to Apple's cut.

Since rolling out its user-tracking changes in 2021, research firm Insider Intelligence claims that 37 percent of iPhone users have opted in to letting companies track their activity across apps. Since the change went into effect, Facebook (now Meta) has seen its revenue growth shrink significantly — and last quarter, Meta reported the first revenue decline in the company's history. 

As these discussions reportedly took place between 2016 and 2018, we're a long way off from these talks. Apple is doing its best to position itself as a defender of privacy, and Meta… well, Meta is busy trying to make the Metaverse a thing. But for now at least, advertising is the only notable way Meta makes revenue, so the company will have to continue to adjust to a world in which iOS app tracking protection is a thing that most users take advantage of.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Meta will limit hiring this year due to slowing revenue growth

Meta is limiting its intake of new employees as part of its efforts to cut costs due to weak revenue forecasts, according to CNBC and Bloomberg. Facebook's parent company is slowing the pace or pausing hiring for most mid-to-senior level positions altogether. It has started putting recruitment on hold, the sources said, after holding off on hiring new entry-level engineers over the past weeks. 

Facebook's latest quarterly earnings results were better than expected, and its daily active users even bounced back a bit from last quarter. However, the company also expects a revenue drop next quarter in part because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Company CFO David Wehner said during the earnings call that Meta "experienced a further deceleration in growth following the start of the Ukraine war due to the loss of revenue in Russia as well as a reduction in advertising demand both within Europe and outside the region." 

In addition, Facebook expects to lose $ 10 billion in revenue due to the changes in Apple's privacy settings on iOS. Apple introduced a new feature earlier this year that limits advertisers' access to the unique IDFA code associated with users' devices. That identifier is what gives companies a way to link a user to their Facebook data and show them targeted ads. Facebook even rolled out a prompt asking users to allow the company to track their activity across websites and apps before the change was implemented in hopes to curb its effects on the company's business.

A Meta spokesperson told the publications:

"We regularly re-evaluate our talent pipeline according to our business needs and in light of the expense guidance given for this earnings period, we are slowing its growth accordingly. However, we will continue to grow our workforce to ensure we focus on long-term impact."

Insider previously reported on leaked internal memos, wherein Wehner said that the hiring freeze will last the rest of the year. It will affect almost every team across the company, which won't be recruiting "engineers, managers and even some director level talent" throughout 2022.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Tesla nearly doubled its revenue in Q1 despite industry wide supply chain woes

Tesla built 305,000 vehicles in the first "exceptionally difficult" quarter of this year, delivered 310,000 of them, and opened new factories in Berlin and Austin — all while CEO Elon Musk sought a highly publicized hostile takeover of Twitter.

Tesla's recent factory investments, as well as efforts to shore up its battery component supply chain, are part of the company's localization strategy, which seeks to lower production costs by building vehicles closer to the markets they'll eventually be sold in. But like the rest of the automotive industry, Tesla faces an increasingly tight supply of critical semiconductors and rising prices spurred by inflation itself brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It also is currently navigating the shuttering of its Gigafactory in Shanghai, which closed due to COVID outbreaks in the region. Work at the factory has only partially resumed in recent days.

At the opening of the Austin Gigafactory earlier this month, Musk confirmed that the long-awaited Cybertruck would finally be going on sale in 2023 and that a wide beta of its Full Self-Driving technology would be rolling out throughout North America this year. However, both the Cybertruck and the upcoming Roadster (as well as "Future Products") are still listed as "in development," as opposed to "in production" as the X/S and 3/Y are in this latest investors deck. Q1 2022 also saw price increases across Tesla's model lineup and the elimination of gratis mobile charging equipment. Overall, the company posted $ 3.3 billion in net income up from $ 438 million last year.

Tesla will hold its quarterly investor teleconference at 5:30pm ET today, stay tuned for updates from that call along with whatever fun tidbits come out of Elon's mouth during it.

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Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Huawei is offering generous revenue splits to bring developers onto its AppGallery store

Huawei has had a very obvious problem since the 2019 trade ban took effect, preventing them from using Google’s apps and services. Yes, losing Gmail and YouTube hurts, but it completely blocks access to millions of other Android apps on Huawei devices. To counter that, Huawei has been pushing their own AppGallery store where Huawei […]

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Streaming dominates the music industry’s revenue

The music industry is on the upswing, and the RIAA has services like Spotify and Apple Music to thank. Adoption has steadily increased, and they accounted for 80 percent of the revenue from the first half of 2019. Despite these record-breaking number…
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HTC catches a break, posts a massive increase in revenue for June

HTC has been riding the struggle bus for a very long time, going from one of the biggest smartphones manufacturers on the planet to a company that’s barely managing to keep the doors open. There have been tons of rumors about when and how HTC will finally go under, including being bought up by a […]

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For Amazon, better skills mean bigger ad revenue

Amazon is improving its Alexa voice assistant with each new update, enabling more natural conversation patterns and upgrading the system's ability to understand complex or vague questions. All of this is great for people who are sick of screaming, "A…
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HTC reports major revenue reductions

Yesterday HTC released their monthly and year-to-date revenue figures for 2018 and things are looking really bad for the company. Sure, things have been bad for HTC for several years now prompting the company sell off a significant portion of their business to Google. Even with that, two rounds of layoffs in their U.S. and […]

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HTC’s revenue in February drops to its lowest in 13 years

Today’s a bad news day for Android manufacturers, apparently. HTC’s February earnings have been reported and things are looking bleak yet again. Earnings dropped 23% from the previous month and 44% from the previous year, totaling around $ 89 million for the entire month. That’s the lowest HTC has experienced in 13 years, which is really bad. It’s […]

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Xiaomi surges past 2017 revenue target setting up for IPO bid

When 2017 opened, Xiaomi was getting over the bump in the road that 2016 had been for the company. Like so many technology companies, Xiaomi succeeded in generating a lot of buzz when they first launched and translated that early success into positive financial results. As they transitioned out of their start up phase though, […]

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HTC U11 sparks revenue growth for the company in June

It’s not a well-kept secret that HTC has struggled pretty badly in the financial department for the past couple of years, but every once in awhile they’ll see a nice revenue bump from a successful flagship launch. It seems like that was the case in June, too, thanks to the slick U11. Revenues in June […]

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Sprint posts big quarterly loss, beats revenue estimates

Sprint has posted some interesting quarterly results, beating revenue expectations. On the other hand, the carrier’s quarterly losses has widened substantially. The better-than-expected revenue seems to come from some hefty discounts and promotions Sprint has been offering in order to reel customers in. With that in mind, the carrier has added 173,000 postpaid customers this […]

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Google takes on Apple with better revenue deal for app developers, report says

On the same day that Apple revealed it’s improving its revenue deal for app developers, a report suggested Google is planning a similar change, though with one important difference.

The post Google takes on Apple with better revenue deal for app developers, report says appeared first on Digital Trends.

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Alphabet Q1 2016 revenue up but misses Wall Street target

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Alphabet reported their 2016 first quarter financial results this past week. Although revenues were up compared to a year ago rising 17%, they did miss Wall Street expectations by the slimmest of margins coming in at $ 20.3 billion versus an expected $ 20.4 billion. Google Inc. still makes up the overwhelming portion of the Alphabet portfolio, but the company’s “moonshot” segments are getting capital support to keep them growing.

For Google Inc., the company breaks things down between the advertising business and all other businesses. If you want to understand why Google positions services and platforms to capitalize on advertising revenue streams, just realize that ad driven revenues accounted for 90% of the $ 20.1 billion in revenue for the quarter. That is a big reason why Google continues to invest in technologies like machine learning and natural language processing in order to ultimately deliver better ads. The remaining 10% is primarily sales through Google Play and other cloud services.

Google indicated advertising driven revenues increased thanks to growth in mobile search. Other Revenues also grew, by a healthy 24% year-over-year, thanks to growth in cloud enterprise businesses. A part of that positive result may be due to long-time rival Apple moving part of its data cloud from Amazon to Google.

Google’s other segments include all of the smaller businesses, sometimes referred to as “moonshots” that have been added to the portfolio. The biggest of these are Nest, Verily and Fiber which produce 99% of the revenue generated by these “Other Bets” companies. For the first quarter, these companies produced $ 166 million in revenue, a sizable 108% increased compared to a year earlier. However, that positive growth is offset by increases in spending, the majority of which was capital spending to build out Google Fiber infrastructure.

Alphabet and Google CFO Ruth Porat noted in a conference call that the pressure is on the various “moonshot” divisions to meet their milestones during 2016. She also indicated that the company is evaluating the portfolio of teams that may be working on similar projects or technologies to determine whether it is really appropriate to continue in an “anything goes” manner.

In response to just barely missing forecasts, the share price for Google stock fell by about 5%. Analysts think the stock was priced for “perfection” and when the company did not quite achieve that, the market responded negatively. However, other analysts noted that there is “nothing wrong with this company” and the swing was perhaps a bit more dramatic than it should have been.

source: Alphabet
via: Business Insider and The New York Times

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Several Rovio games on Amazon Underground managed to triple revenue for developer

amazon-underground-102915Amazon Underground has been gaining momentum since launch, and even big name developers can stand to benefit from putting their games on the service. Rovio, for example, published several big titles to Amazon Underground, including Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Stella, Angry Birds Space, and Bad Piggies, and saw their revenue triple for those titles just by being on Amazon Underground.

While Amazon makes the apps (and their in-app purchases) free for users, it also reimburses developers for every minute that the apps are used. That means that Rovio made some money off of users that probably wouldn’t have purchased anything to begin with, which is a pretty big deal in a time when monetizing mobile apps is extremely difficult.

Now to keep things in perspective, these apps tripled their revenue compared to what was previously being made in Amazon’s own App Store. That doesn’t include the revenue from the Play Store and Apple’s App Store, both of which are certainly bigger pools than Amazon’s fairly limited storefront. But Amazon’s Kindle ecosystem makes up a big enough portion of the pie that it was still probably a fairly profitable move for Rovio to make, and it might entice other developers to follow suit.

source: Amazon

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