Revenue

Why is Apple successful? It all starts with the quality of its products, according to Jonathan Ive. The company's senior vice president of industrial design waxed eloquent on this theme during a talk about Apple's design focus at the British Embassy's Creative Summit.

"I refute that design is important. Design is a prerequisite. Good design -- innovation -- is really hard," said Ive, according to Wired. "We say no to a lot of things that we want to do and are intrigued by so that we only work on a manageable amount of products … Read more

Foursquare has taken off the kid gloves and is ready to start making money. After rolling out "Local Updates" last week, letting any merchant allure potential nearby customers by sending out status updates, it launched "Promoted Updates" today.

Promoted Updates, which is still in pilot, takes the idea of Local Updates up a notch. Rather than being available to any merchant using the check-in service, Promoted Updates is only for those merchants willing to pay Foursquare on a "cost per action" model, according to TechCrunch. While in pilot, there are roughly 20 participating companies, … Read more

Facebook's teeter-totter on the Nasdaq has caused some to wonder whether it's a good idea for Internet companies to go public. After a little back-and-forth and a bit of careful consideration, the online travel agency Kayak has decided to take the plunge.

Trading is scheduled to begin on the Nasdaq tomorrow, with the company's initial public offering set at $26 per share -- above the expected range of $22 to $25, according to CNBC. Kayak aims to sell 3.5 million shares, it said in its regulatory filing last week. At $26, that would mean raising $91 … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices said today that revenue for the quarter ending June 30 is expected to be off 11 percent sequentially.

That's a very different outlook from what AMD forecast previously when it said that second-quarter 2012 revenue was expected to increase 3 percent sequentially, plus or minus 3 percent.

"The lower preliminary revenue results are primarily due to business conditions that materialized late in the second quarter, specifically softer-than-expected channel sales in China and Europe," the company said.

But AMD also attributed the worse-than-expected result to "a weaker consumer buying environment impacting the company's … Read more

Apple announced today it will reveal its fiscal third-quarter financial results on July 24.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer are expected to participate in the earnings call, which is scheduled for 2 p.m. PT that Tuesday. Audio of the event will be streamed live on Apple's investor relations page.

Apple topped Wall Street's estimates with its second-quarter earnings in April, reporting revenue of $39.2 billion and earnings of $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per share. Analysts had expected Apple to report earnings of $9.99 per share on $36.7 billion in … Read more

Facebook made a simple announcement today -- its virtual currency, "credits," is to become real currency, such as dollars, pounds, or rupees. Despite this being a seemingly straightforward notice, a lot can be read into this plan.

It points to the social network looking for additional ways to make money besides advertising and it shows the company's goal to grow as a payment platform embarking on a similar path to Apple with its iTunes store.

The idea of Facebook credits were first debuted in 2008 when the social network changed the monetary units for its "gifts&… Read more

More advertisers are flocking to the Web to court buyers, according to the Associated Press. First quarter results for Internet advertising revenue are in and they're record high -- reaching $8.4 billion.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which gathered the data, told the Associated Press that this is the highest Internet ad revenue ever recorded for the first three months of the year and it's up 15 percent from $7.3 billion during last year's first quarter. The overall record is $9 billion, which happened during the fourth quarter of 2011.

Microsoft is rumored to be edging HTC out of its next version of Windows software, according to Bloomberg. The reason being that the software giant is uneasy about HTC selling enough products or having enough experience making tablets.

This doesn't bode well for HTC's revenue outlook. According to Bloomberg, HTC's second-quarter sales forecast looks to be decreased by 13 percent. On top of that the company's stock has dropped 68 percent in the last year and it is failing on coming close to competing with Apple or Samsung in software or device manufacturing.

"Every consumer … Read more

Twitter expects to post at least $1 billion in revenue by 2014 based on its expectations on the growth of its advertising business, says a Bloomberg report citing "sources with knowledge of the matter."

The growth is twice as fast as what analysts predict, according to Bloomberg. Twitter, however, could change or miss its forecast, the report today said.

The guidance would answer some critics questioning how Twitter would make money off its 140 million users. The company has increased its efforts to lure in marketers to the micro-blogging service, which relies on its users blasting out 140-character … Read more