May 12, 2011
Cisco’s Q3: income rises 5%, profit falls 18%
Network World
Julie Bort shares Cisco’s Q3 financial earnings.
“Cisco reported its 3Q earnings and it was bleak as expected,. Net income fell nearly 18 per cent to $1.8 billion (33 cents/share) vs. $2.19 billion (37 cents/share) a year earlier. Revenue rose about five per cent to $10.9 billion from the year earlier. The earnings met analysts expectations of 35 cents per share to 39 cents a share. CEO John Chambers has said he wants to cut expenses by $1 billion, or about six per cent, reports the Associated Press. The AP said Chambers will make cuts by eliminating jobs. The story indicates that Chambers believes it will meet its planned job cuts through an early retirement program launched in April. Will this be enough? That’s unclear. Cisco may need to 4,000 to 5,000 jobs of the company’s 73,400 employees to meet its six per cent goal, the AP figures.”
iPad not stopping PC sales, says analyst
Register Hardware
Tony Smith writes that according to one research firm, tablet sales aren’t hindering PC sales.
“The iPad is not pulling sales away from PCs, US-based market watcher NPD has claimed. Having spoken to an unspecified – but presumably statistically significant – number of North Americans who have owned an iPad for six months or more, NPD found that only 14 per cent of them had bought the tablet in place of a netbook, notebook or desktop.”
On fragmentation, Google still comes up short against Apple
ZD Net
Peter Cohen shares details about Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.
“Google said that it plans to unify Android operating systems – the “Gingerbread” version that now powers Android-based smartphones and the “Honeycomb” version now featured on tablets – into a single release code-named “Ice Cream Sandwich” that will be released sometime in the fourth calendar quarter of 2011. ‘Our goal with Ice Cream Sandwich is to deliver one operating system that works everywhere, regardless of device,’ writes Hugo Barra, Product Management Director, Android, in a new blog post, and that’s a worthy goal. And as evidenced by Apple’s experience, it can be done right.”