Digital circulation and advertising revenue growth of 51 percent from the previous year came thanks to Future having pushed 65 of its titles to iTunes Store upon Newsstand’s launch early in October.

The result is finally an encouraging sign of light at the end of the tunnel for legacy media businesses which have spent years attempting to transition their efforts from analogue to digital.

Future CEO Mark Wood: “We are starting to see a significant change in the shape of the business as our digital innovation enables us to reach entirely new consumers in global digital markets.”

Future’s UK revenue for the quarter still fell by two percent, but that was mostly from the loss of a separate customer publishing contract, Future reported in Wednesday’s interim earnings disclosure.

Now, for some, the reality may be dawning that, despite many digital products reaping owners dimes rather than dollars when compared with print equivalents, publishing them at scale can nevertheless return a company to pre-digital revenue growth rates.

As paidContent reported in January, Future’s free container apps for its tablet editions have been downloaded nearly 10 million times since Newsstand’s October launch, generating individual sales of over 430,000 magazines during the period.

Forty percent of tablet edition sales are subscriptions, but some of them may be short-term renewals.

“Print sales will be challenging, but we expect digital revenue to maintain a vigorous growth rate,” the company added in its market disclosure on Wednesday.

In the U.S., Future has been more challenged by the more rapid evaporation of print magazine circulations. But, after the board jettisoned CEO Stevie Spring and its finance director in October, replacement Wood has tackled the problem by selling Future’s U.S.-facing music magazines for up to $3 million and by committing to launch U.S. versions of its Radar web portals, starting with TechRadar. Cost cuts have now offset U.S. revenue falls, Wood reports.

The company did not specify print circulation trends.

The growth in Amazon’s print sales could be attributed to Borders’ liquidation in 2011. Szkutak did not say whether the company’s print book revenues increased.

During the call, several analysts expressed concern that North American media sales grew relatively slowly during the quarter—they were up just 8 percent, to $2.56 billion, for Q4, despite the release of the Kindle Fire and new Kindle e-readers. (North American media sales grew 12.9 percent in Q4 2010.)

Szkutak sought to downplay those concerns, repeatedly attributing the slow growth to a decline in video game revenues year-on-year. “That’s impacting the North American media number, particularly versus Q4 last year,” he said—though he said at another point that the company “usually” sees declines in video game revenues in Q4 so it was unclear why things were worse this year.

In response to Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini’s question on whether Kindle Fire sales are cannibalizing sales of Kindle e-ink readers, Szkutak said “both did very well and we’re very pleased with the growth we’re seeing there.”

As for Kindle Fire customers’ conversions to Amazon Prime (they get a 30-day free trial automatically with the purchase of the device), as well as Prime customers’ profitability in general,
Szkutak said it’s too early to tell but, as usual, “we like what we’re seeing.” Amazon is committed to “adding more content to Prime and making Prime better,” he said. “We think it is very good for customers and very good for shareowners….From what we see so far, it supports continued strong investment, so that’s what we’re doing.” He promised “over time we’ll be sharing more.”

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Amazon says Kindle sales (of the Fire and e-readers) “nearly tripled” during the nine-week holiday period ending December 31, up 177 percent over the previous year. As usual, the company did not state how many Kindles it has actually sold.

Operating income was $260 million for the quarter—beating the company’s forecast for operating income between -$200 million and $250 million for the quarter, though down 45 percent from last year. Amazon has invested heavily in fulfillment centers and devices and is believed to be taking a loss on the Kindle Fire. It has stressed that it thinks of the Kindle business in terms of “lifetime value,” including the device, accessories, content, ad-based revenue and the “special offers” on the ad-supported Kindles.

North American media sales grew just 8.1 percent during the quarter, to $2.56 billion, despite the release of the Kindle Fire and new e-readers during the quarter. International media sales for the quarter grew 20.3 percent, to $3.45 billion. Amazon launched Kindle stores in Italy and Spain during the quarter.

Amazon stressed the growth of its various video services, though it did not break out their revenues: The number of videos purchased or rented from Amazon Instant Video “more than doubled” over last year, as did the number of Instant Video customers. And “the number of Prime Instant Video streams increased nearly 300% in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter.” (Prime Instant Video is available free to Amazon Prime members, who can choose from a library of over 13,000 titles.)

release

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New figures from Strategy Analytics show that Nokia, with shipments (which Nokia terms “sales”: more on that below) of 113.5 million, has continued to hold on to its position as the number-one phone maker in Q4. Its lead has narrowed by quite some way over last year: it was at 26.9 percent for the quarter and 25.5 percent for the year, compared to 30.9 percent and 33.3 percent for the quarter and year in 2010.

Samsung, shipping 95 million units, made smaller gains than Nokia lost: 1.1 percent on the quarter and 0.5 percent on the year to claim the number two-slot.

What stood in its way to overtaking Nokia? Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). On the strength of its smartphone-only portfolio, it made the biggest gain in market share of the top-three, picking up 4.3 percentage points for the quarter on shipments (like Nokia, Apple calls them “sales”) of 37 million units, to take an 8.3 percent share of the market for the quarter, and 6 percent for the year.

That’s sort of comparing apples with oranges, though. When comparing like-for-like: Apple has edged past Samsung for the quarter with a 0.4 percent lead in market share in smartphones, while over the whole of 2011, Samsung just about still leads Apple, with a 0.9 percent lead.

Nokia trailed the two by nearly twelve percentage points for the quarter, a big reversal from a year ago when it was well in the lead as the biggest-single smartphone maker.

Figures out today from IHS iSuppli, meanwhile, add in two more handset makers to the mix. It says that Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) took the number-four slot after the first three (ranking them in the same order as Strategy Analytics); with Motorola (NYSE: MMI) just behind, with six million and five million devices shipped, respectively. IHS did not include RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), HTC or LG (SEO: 066570)—other notable vendors—in its rankings; they have not reported quarterly figures this week.

In both smartphones and mobile devices overall, “Others” grew numbers in unit terms and made an annual gain on market share to become the biggest group for 2011 market share in Strategy Analytics’ figures. That means still a lot of competition out there from many handset makers, with none of them having a significant enough share to merit placement in the top-three.

On a services level, that speaks to a continuing and strong amount of device fragmentation. That will continue to slow down revenue growth in other areas like mobile content and advertising—areas where it pays for there to be scale to charge the biggest prices. (Case in point: can you imagine what TV advertising or content production would be like if distributors and media buyers had to format ads for different TV set models?)

On shipments versus sales. While these numbers can be instructive, they can also be confusing: If you look at Strategy Analytics’ “shipments” numbers, they are the same as the “sales” numbers that companies like Apple and Nokia reported this week. Neil Mawston, executive director for Strategy Analytics’ global wireless practice, says vendors “tend to use those words interchangeably” even though one refers to actual devices in people’s hands, while the other is for devices that have been shipped to distributors, but not necessarily sold. “They can be open to interpretation,” he admitted. “A lot of companies use smoke and mirrors,” so Strategy Analytics uses other measures such as “channel checks” to measure shipments.

On RIM. It’s notable that RIM didn’t appear in the top-three smartphone makers, so I asked Mawston about their prospects: He says they are “not too far behind number-three” at the moment in overall rankings and smartphones, “and if they had a good quarter or two they could get close.” But the trend so far has been that RIM’s been slowing down and “not providing too much competition” globally. He didn’t mention Motorola or Sony Ericsson, which made iSuppli’s global ranking.

On Samsung. Mawston believes Samsung will stay ahead in smartphones, even with Apple’s strong Q4: “It just has more price points, appeals to both post and prepaid customers, and has a bigger distribution network among carriers,” he said, adding that Apple may well give it a run for its money. “They may trade places for a few quarters.”

He notes that Apple has a massive retail presence in some countries like the U.S. but ultimately it’s the carrier network that really gives device makers that extra leg up in worldwide sales—a key pillar of Nokia‘s fightback strategy, too. “The key thing with carriers is that they can subsidize the iPhone [or another device]. Without operator subsidies, [smartphones] would be nowhere near as large right now.”

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Record profits were the big story for Samsung during the fourth quarter, in which it recorded $4.7 billion in profit according to Reuters (NYSE: TRI). Revenue was up 13 percent to 47.3 trillion won ($42 billion) and profit rose 16 percent compared to last year. Samsung is of course a huge conglomerate, with businesses ranging from mobile phones and televisions to semiconductors and refrigerators.

Samsung’s mobile unit reported a 54 percent increase in revenue and a 74 percent increase in profits, hours after fellow Android rival Motorola (NYSE: MMI) reported a loss for its fourth quarter. Samsung has had the upper hand in the Android world for several months despite Google’s pending purchase of Motorola, with devices like the Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy Nexus leading the way. But it provided no data on tablet sales, several months after the launch of the Galaxy Tab, something even Motorola was able to disclose.

The company would only say that smartphone shipments increased 30 percent compared to the past quarter, which analysts interviewed by Reuters interpreted as around 36 million units, just shy of the 37 million iPhones that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) sold during its first fiscal quarter. It’s quite disappointing that Samsung would take a cue from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) in declining to report actual shipment totals, but it’s understandable why the company may not welcome direct comparisons with competitors.

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Revenue was in line with the lowered guidance Motorola provided in December of $3.4 billion. Excluding special items, earnings per share were $0.20, far greater than expectations of $0.06, but using the GAAP standard Motorola recorded a net loss of $80 million compared to a net income of $80 million in last year’s fourth quarter.

Smartphone shipments came in at 5.3 million units, up from 4.9 million units a year ago, while tablet shipments remained anemic at just 200,000 units. For the full year Motorola shipped 18.7 million smartphones and 1 million tablets, it said.

But Motorola’s mobile division had a scary year: the group recorded an operating loss of $285 million for the full year, and an operating loss of $70 million in the fourth quarter. Motorola didn’t make any money selling phones last year, either, losing $70 million for the full year.

Those totals include sales of regular old feature phones, still a big part of Motorola’s overall business. The company sold 10.5 million mobile devices in the fourth quarter and 42.4 million devices for the year.

Motorola is still waiting to hear if regulators will approve Google’s bid to purchase the company for $12.5 billion, and as a result it no longer holds the customary conference call following the release of an earnings report.

(Updated 4:46 p.m. ET: I changed the original headline and a couple of references in the text to make it clear that Motorola’s losses were across all of its mobile devices, not just smartphones.)

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The $4 billion charge—$3 billion in fees and $1 billion in wireless spectrum to T-Mobile USA—put a big dampener the quarter, which otherwise saw big gains in what the carrier refers to as its “growth engines”: wireless services and specifically those around smartphones; wireline data, including its U-verse TV service; and business services.

Overall revenues were $32.5 billion for the quarter, coming in above analyst estimates according to a poll from Yahoo. Excluding the charges, earnings per share were $0.42, which missed average analysts’ estimates of $0.43. The total net loss for the quarter was $6.63 billion.

iPhone juggernaut. It’s been a year since AT&T lost its exclusive grip on the iPhone in the U.S. but such is the power of the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) brand in wireless right now, and AT&T’s continuing hold on its original iPhone customers, that the carrier nevertheless continues to get great dividends out of its association with it. AT&T said that it made 7.6 million iPhone activations for the quarter, with overall smartphone sales totaling 9.4 million devices.

AT&T didn’t spell out exactly how many iPhones it sold of those activated—and indeed some could have been bought directly from Apple unlocked. But if you assume that most would have been bought directly via AT&T, that works out to AT&T accounting for some 20 percent of the 37 million iPhones Apple sold in the last quarter, and iPhone accounting for some 80 percent of AT&T’s smartphone sales.

It also shows that despite some of the negative press that AT&T has faced over the quality of its wireless data network, it is still holding on to its customers over competitors Verizon and Sprint (NYSE: S). In its earnings earlier this week, Verizon noted that it had sold 7.7 million smartphones and seen 4.3 million iPhone activations in the quarter.

Correspondingly, AT&T said it saw a 10 percent growth in wireless revenues to $16.7 billion. Wireless data revenue growth is outstripping that of mobile revenues overall: it was $5.9 billion, up nearly 20 percent on a year ago, which AT&T says was driven by internet access, app usage and messaging.

AT&T’s fixed digital content play isn’t doing so bad, either. Revenues for its U-verse high-speed broadband and TV service were up by almost 44 percent over a year ago, and partly offset declines in DSL. Still not by enough: total revenues for wireline services were down by 1.4 percent to $14.9 billion.

AT&T does not break out tablets as an individual category and instead groups them with other non-phone “branded computing devices” like aircards. It said it had its best-ever quarter for the category, with sales of 571,000 with total subscribers now numbering 5.1 million, a rise of 70 percent.

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Nokia currently has two models Windows Phone devices in the market, the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, both 3G models, and is planning to launch a new 4G version in the U.S. in March of this year.

The day before Nokia’s results, a trio of news items released by the company—combined with the “leak” that it would be offering its first 4G phone, the Lumia 900, at a massive discount to the rest of the 4G offerings out there—looked a little like padding for worse news to come today, and that’s more or less what we got:

Handset unit sales were down eight percent to 113.5 million.

Feature phones actually held up in their unit sales: 93.9 million for the quarter, down by only one percent.

Smartphones, however, did significantly worse: 19.6 million devices, down 31 percent.

Device revenues overall were €6 billion, down 29 percent. Again, the biggest weakness was in smartphones, which had sales of €2.74 billion, down 38 percent.

Not surprisingly, Nokia is very much trying to draw a line under last year, one of profound transformation for the company, and look ahead to what 2012 will hold.

It’s taking a very aggressive strategy to pick up much-needed market share for its devices in key markets like the U.S. and UK, offering its handsets at massive discounts—and in the case of the UK, even free under certain contracts. That tactic will come at a big price though: unless Nokia has worked out a way to make high-end devices for less money than its competitors, it will continue to see erosion of its margins and device average selling price. In other words, it might win business, but at what cost?

In the quarter just ended, those margins continued their decline. In this quarter Nokia reported gross margins of 23.7 percent on smart devices, compared to 30.8 percent for the same quarter a year ago. ASP for smartphones was down by only three percent to €140—a figure that was helped by sales of more expensive models such as the N9 and the Lumia 800, according to Nokia. Feature phones saw a decline of 10 percent in ASP to €35, their lowest price yet.

Windows Phone sales. Nokia reached a milestone—or a “beachhead” as it calls it—by selling more than 1 million Lumia handsets. But this number is still a far, far cry from the 20.8 million smart devices that Nokia sold in Q4 of 2009, let alone the 37 million iPhones sold by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) sold in Q4 2011.

The Windows Phone platform, according to figures from Kantar out this week, accounted for less than two percent of sales in any of the nine countries it surveys as a barometer of smartphone demand. That points to a very long road ahead for both companies to bring those numbers into a more credibly competing realm.

Nokia says that it will introduce its first WP7 devices into China and Latin America in the first half of 2012. This is important for a number of reasons: Greater China is currently Nokia’s second-largest market after Europe (€5 billion in device sales for China compared to €7 billion for Europe), but it is declining, seeing an 18 percent drop in revenues over last year and 20 percent in volumes. Meanwhile, LatAm is Nokia’s second-smallest market after North America but it’s one of the only ones that is growing (Middle East being the other growth region.) In LatAm, Nokia had sales of €2.5 billion on volumes of 46 million units.

LatAm and China are also both markets where Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has yet to introduce Windows Phone, and where there is still a lot of room for smartphone growth—something that Apple, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) and Android makers have not overlooked, either. Still, that means a population of consumers with less preconceptions about Android and iOS being “the” smartphone platforms of the future—getting through to those consumers is crucial if Microsoft truly hopes to makes its OS a truly global smartphone player.

Design front and center. In one more move to shore up confidence for the year ahead, Nokia today, separately, also announced that Marko Ahtisaari has been promoted to the position of EVP of design, and has also joined the company’s leadership team. Ahtisaari is a Nokia veteran who left the company and then returned after it acquired his social networking startup Dopplr. The emphasis on design is a significant one, considering that this is where Nokia will have to differentiate and excel in the years ahead as it makes phones on a platform—Windows Phone—that is also being used by its competitors.

During the earnings analyst call, Nokia executives gave a bit more color to the results:

CEO Stephen Elop acknowledged some of the big issues facing declining sales for the Symbian platform but still said the company would continue to remain committed to supporting the OS through 2016. Nokia earlier this year struck an outsourcing deal with Accenture to take over the management of the platform as part of its gradual winding down of operations. In the last year, Nokia has rolled out several new devices based on Symbian, and has a roadmap for updates to the software for the year ahead.

Nokia also highlighted the platform support payments and licensing fees that Microsoft and Nokia are paying each other. It was described by the company’s CFO Timo Ihamuotila as a “competitive” structure that will run in the billions of dollars between the two companies—although no indication of which party benefits more financially from those. This last quarter, Nokia recorded a payment of $250 million from Microsoft as a result of this arrangement and did not specify whether it paid out money to Microsoft as well. Consider that without that quarter-billion dollar payment those bottom-line results would have been even more gloomy.

The company will be offering a dividend of 20 euro cents per share and has no plans for stock repurchases in the year ahead.

Elop also highlighted something we have heard many times already—from carriers and Nokia itself: “The third ecosystem” argument is “very strong” with carriers. One wonders what that might mean between the lines. More big discounts, subsidized by operators, in the pipeline? More large orders ahead? Preferential treatment for Nokia over other platforms and handset makers?

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Considering it is unlikely that Nokia will have arrested the declines it has been posting in revenues and market share for the past several quarters, the first two news items are more likely being released now to get investors in a good mood before breaking them the less good news tomorrow.

It is also another signal to the public that Nokia is moving swiftly along in its strategy to change up, in the wake of the famous “burning platform” memo sent out by CEO Stephen Elop (pictured) almost a year ago today.

Series 40. Nokia today announced that it had sold its 1.5 billionth Series 40 feature phone. The sale, appropriately enough, was made in Brazil—which, with the rest of the BRIC block, is a market that all big handset makers are sizing up as the next big target for mobile growth.

It was only yesterday that news emerged that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) had hired a person (a Brazilian) to oversee Latin America. The Series 40 operating system is a proprietary OS of Nokia’s that is worth watching: earlier this month the company bought Smarterphone to enhance its feature phones, and these devices are being seen by Nokia, Samsung and others as a key ramping-up route to eventual smartphone users.

So much so that RIM’s new CEO had to face a question from an analyst on his first day in the job about whether BlackBerry would be considering a similar route to be able to pick up more users in emerging markets. (For the record, Thorsten Heins didn’t seem to warm to the idea.)

Nokia definitely wants to highlight its activity in the region of Latin America: in the last quarter (Q3) the company reported that revenues had declined by seven percent to $531 million and unit sales by six percent to 10.9 million devices.

Romania. Meanwhile, another step was completed in Nokia’s downsizing strategy, as the company found a buyer for its plant in Romania, closed down in November 2011 as part of its cost-cutting program. The plant had been used to make feature phones, but now it will be used to make home appliances for De’Longhi, the Italian home appliances maker. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it’s not clear whether any of Nokia’s former employees were included as part of the transfer deal.

Lastly, the re-stated results. As Nokia said that it would, the company has also now published a recast list of figures for financial quarters covering the previous two years. It says that it has done this mainly to account for how it has regrouped its mapping assets, NAVTEQ (NYSE: NVT) with its social location services, which used to be part of Nokia’s Devices & Services segment but are now together form a new division, Location & Commerce.

Important to note that these are not re-reported results: for example, Nokia’s operating loss for Q3 was still €71 million, no matter how you cut it.

Looking ahead to Thursday. Mobile people will be watching tomorrow’s results eagerly, not least because they want to see if Nokia includes some meaningful numbers about early sales of its new Windows Phone 7 smartphones. There has been a lot of dispute about how well these have been going: a report earlier this week indicated that Nokia had shipped 1.3 million Lumia devices, although some back-of-the-napkin analysis from Benedict Evans gave a far lower number for the number of phones that Nokia may have actually sold: between 300,000 and 400,000.

One operator claimed that their stock of Lumia devices, while figures from one retailer in the UK provided to paidContent indicated that Nokia’s Lumia 800—its first WP device in the UK—accounted for only 0.17 percent of sales in its first weeks on sale in the UK.

All of these are problematic in their own way, so hopefully Nokia will put a full stop to some of these question marks tomorrow.

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Apple’s quarterly revenue was $46.34 billion, up 73 percent compared to last year’s fourth quarter. Net income was $13.06 billion, more than double last year’s profit of $6 billion and representing earnings per share of $13.87. Analysts were expecting $38.85 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $10.08, according to Yahoo Finance.

The fourth quarter (it’s actually Apple’s first fiscal quarter) was the first that the iPhone 4S was on sale, and that appears to have gone pretty well for the company. The 37 million iPhones sold during the quarter is also more than double the total from last year’s fourth quarter of 16.2 million and shows just how much pent-up demand there was for a new iPhone earlier this year: Apple sold 17 million iPhones a quarter ago. Apple has now sold 315 million iOS devices in total as of December, said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial analyst.

It seems pretty clear that smartphone market share will have moved in Apple’s favor during the fourth quarter, once the estimates are released over the next week or so. Apple CEO Tim Cook said on the company’s earnings call that while he can’t always get hard data on Android market share because of the free-for-all that is the Android community, Nielsen estimates for the fourth quarter suggest Apple is now neck-and-neck with Android for U.S. smartphone operating system market share. (See our chart on historical iPhone sales here.)

Some analysts think Samsung, perhaps the most vibrant Android partner, sold as many as 35 million smartphones during the quarter, but Samsung won’t release official numbers until Friday. Still, Motorola (NYSE: MMI) and HTC have struggled to the finish line in 2011, and Apple may have made significant gains at their expense, especially in the U.S.

Cook also made it clear that Apple is watching the fortunes of Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8, noting in response to a question about the two-horse race that’s often used to describe Apple versus Android: “There’s a horse in Redmond that always suits up and always runs, and will keep running.”

The iPad growth story was also off the charts: again more than double the totals from a year ago (15.4 million compared to 7.3 million) and up 40 percent compared to the third calendar quarter of the year despite new low-cost Android tablets from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) that actually appeared to resonate with consumers.

Cook said that if that’s true—that the Kindle Fire and others captivated the public—that Apple didn’t notice anything with respect to its own sales. “People really want to do multiple things with their tablets, we don’t see limited function tables and ereaders being in the same category,” he said. “I think they’ll sell a fair number of units, but I don’t think that people that want an iPad will settle for a limited function (device).”

In other numbers:

»  85 million people signed up for iCloud after its launch in October.

»  iPod sales were down 21 percent compared to a last ago, as it becomes pretty clear the world is moving on from standalone MP3 players. Still, Apple continues to lead the market for that type of device, Oppenheimer said, also noting that iOS-running iPod Touches make up over half of all iPod sales.

»  Mac desktop sales increased by 21 percent while Mac laptop sales increased 26 percent. Cook made it pretty clear that Apple isn’t focusing on desktops, however, noting IDC numbers that tablets outsold desktop PCs in the U.S. during the fourth quarter.

»  Revenue from the iTunes Store was up 42 percent compared to last year, and Oppenheimer said that 140 million pieces of content—apps, music, and video—were downloaded from the iTunes Store on Christmas Day alone. He also noted that 600,000 copies of Apple’s new iBooks Author tool were downloaded following last week’s iBooks event.

Apple even managed to match analyst expectations as far as its outlook for the upcoming quarter, something it rarely does. Apple said it expects to record revenue of $32.5 billion and earnings per share of $8.50, compared to estimates for $32.04 billion and earnings per share of $8.03.

Here’s how the stock market reacted in after-hours trading:

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Those revenues were slightly lower than the $1.19 billion expected by analysts polled by none other than Yahoo Finance.

Earnings per share stood at 24 cents—exactly the same as Q4 2010, and in line with analysts’ expectations. That probably comes as some relief to investors, considering all the turmoil the company has seen in the past year: changes have included a new CEO, numerous executive departures, an overhaul of its advertising system to partner up with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and AOL (NYSE: AOL), and continuing loss of market share in both display and search to other competitors like Google.

The numbers and business situation of Yahoo couldn’t be more different from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), which also reported earnings moments ago with sales of $46 billion for the quarter.

Some of the particulars from the Yahoo’s results release:

—Display revenue was $612 million, a four percent decrease compared to $635 million for the fourth quarter of 2010. For the full-year they were actually slightly up: $2.16 billion compared to $2.15 billion in 2010.
—Search revenue was $465 million, down a massive 27 percent compared to $640 million for the fourth quarter of 2010.
—North America revenue was $885 million, down from $991 million for the quarter last year.

Yahoo will be hosting an investor call to go through the earnings, and for its new CEO, Scott Thompson, to give a few more particulars about the state of the company. A call with investors and media three weeks ago when his appointment was announced were very light on specifics. We’ll update this post as that proceeds.

Update: The call is kicking off with a few words from Thompson. “I’ve validated what I believed coming in, the talent of the people and the huge opportunity ahead of us,” said Thompson. “I believe we have a lot of work to do and it’s still early.” He says that at the moment Yahoo has 702 million unique visitors worldwide. He says he will lay out the foundations for what he plans for 2012.

He says in the future he will provide more insight about the details of results covering regional differences.

“There is no question we need to do better and we will,” he says. “We need to better monetize the engagement that we have.”

Display was mainly affected by declines in the Americas—it actually grew in Asia Pacific and Europe, while declining in the U.S.

The sales force is getting overhauled, according to CFO Tim Morse. “Several major advertisers that reduced spend in 2011…have made meaningful commitments or 2012.”

Unique visitors are up by 11 percent around Yahoo’s “tent pole” events such as the Super Bowl, the Royal Wedding and others. Yahoo is putting more, Morse says, into its “editorial voice,” with the creation of original content. One recent notable announcement there is the project with Tom Hanks; another is the creation of Livestand.

Some frank and slightly depressing words that really size up not just the challenge ahead but perhaps hint at employee morale? “Despite these changes, revenue isn’t growing,” said Morse. “We expected better.”

Back to Thompson who gives a very robust pep talk for the future, which sounded very encouraging except that it’s Yahoo we’re talking about, which has been the subject of many robust speeches over the years. Some highlights:

“Our users need to use our services more frequently…We need to be a media company as well as a tech company.”

“I make decisions quickly and move fast, fast, fast. That’s how we get to playing offense rather than defense.”

“We will focus on balancing our investment resources and allocation of capital on products of today, tomorrow and long term…To strike the right balance, we need to focus on the products that are driving results today. But also the business of tomorrow. But also a small but meaningful percentage on products that will play out 12 months from now.”

“At least two fundamental building blocks customer experience and data…We want our users to spend more time with yahoo because they love what we are doing.”

“Data is the most underrated asset at Yahoo.”

“I believe our company can do much more to innovate and disrupt.”

Some questions from the analysts:

Future acquisitions?
These will be made to fill technology gaps, said Thompson.

What’s your strategy to turn around display?
Alas, no specifics but this: “We’re meeting with customers to understand why they don’t give us more of their spend. We’re after this with a real sense of urgency. Too early to say what actions we might take but full intention is to get that back and growing at a healthy rate.

Are there no sacred cows going forward? And what about premium video, any new deals?
Thompson: “I could interpret the first question in a variety of ways, as part of the work we’re doing we are understanding and evaluating all options going forward. Things we will continue, stop, and additional monetization strategies. We are being aggressive.”

Morse: “As for short-form, we had 9 of the top 10 original shows for web programing. We need to do more there (no numbers disclosed on traffic).”

What products do you think are appropriate areas for Yahoo to move into? And what about the declines in search?
Thompson: “Too early for strategic framework but we are looking at how to increase monetization.” Morse: “On search, in mobile it’s still too early on for how you monetize going forward. There is a lot yet left to evolve in mobile. I’m not concerned, I’m optimistic.” Thompson: “No winner has shown himself visible in mobile search.” (Google (NSDQ: GOOG) might beg to differ here.)

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Verizon’s overall results were quite poor, but that’s because of a one-time expense to devalue the pension fund administered by Verizon Communications, which operates Verizon Wireless as a joint venture with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD). Once you factor out that $3.4 billion charge, however, Verizon earned 52 cents a share, down slightly from a year ago and just under analyst expectations for 53 cents a share.

On a conference call following its earnings release Tuesday morning, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo told financial analysts that the company should be able to make up the difference over the life of the two-year contract that many of its smartphone sales require, given that a good percentage of those who bought shiny new smartphones around the holidays also likely opted for expensive data plans. However, Marketwatch notes that he also didn’t rule out the possibility that Verizon might raise prices for those plans in the future, following a decision by AT&T (NYSE: T) last week to raise plan prices in exchange for hiking data limits.

Of course, the iPhone numbers were highly anticipated given Apple’s own earnings report expected later on Tuesday as well as the interest in how iPhone sales in the U.S. split across the three carriers that now offer the device. Sprint (NYSE: S) paid a far higher price than Verizon to carry the iPhone, with profits not expected for many years, and we’ll get a sense of how that decision impacted its short-term results when Sprint reports in two weeks.

Verizon sold 2.4 million LTE smartphones during the quarter, and added 1.5 million new subscribers to maintain its status as the largest carrier in the U.S. with 108.7 million subscribers overall.

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Revenue for the quarter was $20.89 billion, a little off of what analysts were expecting but when the numbers are that big a miss of $40 million isn’t the end of the world. Earnings per share were $0.78, two cents better than expectations, and so overall there was much rejoicing in the after-hours market, which really shouldn’t be held during Happy Hour on the East Coast.

Still, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has a well-documented long-term problem. Windows continues to generate big profits but it’s in decline, buffeted by the mobile revolution that Microsoft mainly participates in through licensing agreements. This is a big year for Windows Phone and Windows 8, two projects that appear to show Microsoft has learned some lessons over the last five years but are still in “wait-and-see” mode.

In other areas, the company is doing quite well. Xbox sales continue to grow, leading Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices group to a 15 percent revenue boost, the best performance of any division. And the amount of money Microsoft continued to pour down the Internet drain decreased in its fourth quarter, to “just” $458 million, an improvement from last year’s loss of $559 million coupled with revenue growth of 10 percent.

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It’s important to note that Google has never provided its own earnings estimates on a quarter-to-quarter basis; these estimates are those of financial analysts that follow the company. They were looking for more than $2.71 billion in GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net income, which was a six percent increase compared to net income of $2.54 billion a year ago.

Google’s revenue growth was strong, up 25 percent to $10.58 billion before traffic-acquisition costs are factored in. Analysts tend to focus on that latter number, and they were expecting net revenue of $8.41 billion, as compared to the $8.13 billion in net revenue it otherwise recorded.

Without directly acknowledging the estimates of financial analysts gathered on Google’s earnings conference call, CFO Patrick Pichette noted the negative effects of currency fluctuations and an impairment charge related to a previous Google investment in Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR) on Google’s earnings during the quarter. That might account for much of the disconnect between Google’s performance and the expectations of the financial community.

Analysts peppered CEO Larry Page with so many questions about the eight percent decline in the important cost-per-click metric—the average cost that advertisers pay Google per a click on their ads—that he half-jokingly asked for a break from discussion of the issue. Google doesn’t think it’s that big a deal: overall clicks increased as the result of site improvements, said Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of advertising, who also said this was positive for both Google’s revenue and for the campaigns of its advertisers.

The surprise miss overshadowed what was otherwise a pretty decent quarter for Google, but seems right at home amid the disastrous few weeks the company has had to kick off 2012. Google+ now has 90 million users, Google said (without defining what a “user” is in this context) and advertising revenue on the core search site was up 29 percent compared to last year at this time.

Page and Wojcicki defended the decision to integrate Google+ into the company’s core search project, which Page said allows Google to provide a better product because it helps the search engine understand the differences between how two different individuals with identical search queries perceive the world. If Google had as much social data as Facebook or Twitter, that might be true, but it does not, and Page admitted that those companies don’t seem very interested in sharing that data with Google.

Page also said 250 million Android devices are in use, and the company also said that its display-advertising business is on pace to do $5 billion a year in revenue.

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Not brilliant news for Motorola Mobility and its would-be buyer, Google: the handset maker today issued preliminary Q4 results that will fall short of market expectations, citing competition from other handset makers and costs related to patent litigation.

Motorola today said in a statement that it expects to post sales of $3.4 million billion with only “modest” profitability (the exact amount, slightly worryingly, was not specified). It estimates shipments of 10.5 million mobile devices, with 5.3 million of those smartphones. Its Home business, covering digital media technology, should bring in $900 million.

According to poll of analysts by Reuters, Moto was expected to report $3.88 million billion in revenues. The shipment numbers will be down on the 11.3 million posted for Q3, although smartphones are up compared to the 4.8 million reported for in that period.

In its release Motorola cites the “increased competitive environment” for some of the shortfall, and to be sure companies like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Samsung are really killing it right now in smartphones, both in market share and, significantly, mindshare.

But turning this around, you could also argue that Moto has failed to deliver compelling enough handsets of its own. These have included the Droid Razr, the company’s first smartphone riff on its once-bestselling Razr line, a new version of its Atrix 4G device, the extended rollout of its Defy device. Motorola doesn’t specify any more on its IP litigation but it is fighting suits against Apple and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), among others, not just in the U.S. but in Europe as well.

Motorola, which makes smartphones based on Google’s Android platform, is not the only Android maker reporting bad news today. HTC also today said its profits declined in the face of ongoing competition in the smartphone market. Given that Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) (soon to be only Sony) and LG (SEO: 066570), two other major Android device makers, have also had some trouble in their device businesses, it seems that the only Android partner really winning right now is Samsung, which today also reported quarterly results with a growth in revenues and profits.

While this is not great news for Motorola, it is also potentially a bother for another major company: Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which is currently in the process of buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. If the phone business is proving a challenge, and the Moto patents that Google sorely needs are costing a fortune to defend, then where, exactly, will the value be in the deal?

We may get some more color on this news next week during CES, where Motorola Mobility will have a strong presence. The company will be releasing its full Q4 earnings on January 26.

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First, the numbers: for the three months that ended in December, the Korea-based Samsung reported operating profit 5.2 trillion won ($4.5 billion), versus 3.01 trillion won a year ago, beating average analyst expectations of 4.6 trillion-won (via Bloomberg). Revenues rose 12 percent to 47 trillion won ($40.4 billion). Late last year, Samsung noted that it was on track to sell more than 300 million phones, a record for it.

HTC, meanwhile, saw its first drop in operating profit in two years. The Taiwan-based company today reported operating profit of NT$13 billion (NT$11 billion after tax) ($430 million; $364 million), compared to operating profit of NT$16.7 billion the year before. That fell short of Bloomberg’s estimates of post-tax profit of NT$11.6 billion. Revenues were also down on the same quarter a year ago: NT$101.4 billion ($3.36 billion), versus NT$104 billion a year ago. The statement from HTC did not give unit sales numbers for the quarter but the company had already issued warnings that they would not be as high as they had earlier hoped.

So why is HTC not doing as well as Samsung? Some areas to ponder:

Product mix: Samsung says it will be releasing its full results after board approval, so we don’t know how sales of its feature devices compare to those of the smartphone and tablet lineup, but one boost could come not from Android but its other line of mobile devices: its bada-based feature phones.

Gartner, which actually classifies those bada-based handsets as smartphones, showed that in Q3, Samsung’s feature phone line grew its share of the market and is at the moment actually surpassing the likes of Windows Phone 7 in terms of volume.

Bada, it should be pointed out, was in fact the only other “smartphone” platform besides Android that grew both market share and unit sales in that quarter. Market share was up to 2.2 percent from its previous share of 1.1 percent, and sales more than doubled to 2.5 million units in the quarter.

HTC, on the other hand, has taken the approach of pushing a smartphone-only line of products. That has limited its appeal to different segments of the market—especially with so many Android makers now looking to make cheaper and cheaper smartphones. Also, it doesn’t give HTC the same kind of entry-level device roadmap to tie in non-smartphone users to its brand for the longer run.

The 300-lb Apple in the room: HTC’s smartphone-only approach has another consequence. It puts HTC more directly in competition with another device maker that focuses only on smartphones, the high-end, and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). On top of the existing heat from Samsung, as a Nomura analyst describes to Bloomberg, HTC has not yet found its “competitive edge” against these two.

Brand strength? Ironically, that competitive edge, it could be argued, may have been dulled by too many products within the smartphone-only category. Samsung and Apple have coalesced their smartphone ranges around single brands, respectively the Galaxy and iPhone lines.

And HTC? There are the Sensation, Wildfire and Rhyme—among many others—with no “Rhyme” or reason to the naming, and even different launch names in different markets (the allegedly-bad-selling Status nee Cha Cha being one).

“There’s a balance to be struck between giving consumers a good set of options and just confusing them with too much choice,” noted Benedict Evans, an analyst with Enders Analysis in London, to me. “Nokia (NYSE: NOK) made that mistake a few years ago and HTC has made it now. Even the naming is confusing - which is the better product out of the Sensation, Wildfire, Desire or Incredible?”

Some of these phones had some eye-catching differences—again, the Facebook-friendly phones like the Status/Cha Cha among them—but perhaps not enough to build a single identity, and even with HTC’s own UI skin, Sense, connecting the lot of them.

On the horizon: From reports out today, possibly spun out by HTC to divert attention from the quarterly results, the company will be adding even more devices to that lineup: it is reportedly gearing up to show off its first super-fast quad-core devices in February at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Again, that could be preaching to only a niche market; by the time that such speeds are in widespread demand there will likely be others producing them, too. Still, it does happen that 4G devices is a category that HTC happens to be leading at the moment, according to NPD.

One dark horse for HTC could be this alleged Facebook phone that it is reported to be developing: if that really materializes, and if Facebook manages to keep from upsetting the world over privacy any more than it already has, and if that phone really does offer something more than what the current crop of devices do for the average user, then this could help turn things around.

For now, though, it looks like Samsung’s called heads on that Android coin toss, and it’s winning.

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For the three-month period ending November 26th, RIM reported revenue of $5.2 billion, down six percent from the same quarter last year. When it announced that it would be taking a $485 million charge related to Playbook inventory, it also said it wouldn’t meet its previous revenue guidance of between $5.3 billion to $5.6 billion. Financial analysts polled by Yahoo Finance, even taking that lowered expectation into account, still thought the company would take in $5.27 billion in revenue.

Net income for the quarter was $265 million, down substantially from net income of $911 million a year ago. Excluding the one-time charge related to the Playbook as well as a $54 million charge related to the three-day BlackBerry outage and a $7 million “cost-optimization charge,” adjusted net income was $667 million, or earnings per share of $1.27. Analysts were expecting earnings per share of $1.19.

And RIM’s outlook for the upcoming quarter was even worse. The company projected that it would ship between 11 million and 12 million smartphones, a steep decline from shipments of 14.1 million smartphones in its third quarter and perhaps a sign that BlackBerry inventory is piling up the same way that Playbook inventory did. Revenue is expected to be between $4.6 billion and $4.9 billion, and earnings per share are expected to be just $0.80 to $0.95.

Even taking into account the negative sentiment surrounding RIM’s current position in the mobile market, financial analysts were projecting a 7 percent drop in RIM’s revenue for the upcoming quarter, to $5.12 billion, and a 34 percent drop in earnings per share to $1.18. RIM’s own management took it a step further, projecting a 14 percent drop in revenue going into the next quarter and a stunning 50 percent drop in earnings per share.

But don’t worry, the company said in its earnings release.

“As part of our commitment to improving our performance to better meet the expectations of shareholders and customers, we continue to evaluate ways to improve in several areas of the Company’s operations,” Balsillie and Lazaridis said in a prepared statement. “It may take some time to realize the benefits of these efforts and the platform transition that we are undertaking, but we continue to believe that RIM has the right set of strengths and capabilities to maintain a leading role in the mobile communications industry.”

Stay tuned for what promises to be a surreal conference call at 2 p.m. PT.

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In a research note from Sterne Agee, analyst Shaw Wu notes that he is raising his forecasts for Apple’s quarterly earnings and now expects the company to sell 28 million iPhones, up from a previous estimate of 26 million. He also raised his figures for Mac computers to 5.2 million from five million.

However, he also reduced the number of iPad tablets to 13.5 milion from 15 million.

Wu attributes the higher iPhone figure to a couple of factors. First, there is the launch of the 4S device, which has a faster processor than its predecessor and some notable new features, including the Siri voice assistant that could well set off another new direction for what we will be seeing in phones in the year ahead. He’s not the first to point out an increase in sales for Apple based on the 4S: stats from Kantar Worldpanel the other week noted that the 4S has been stealing the show among smartphones in the UK.

But what is also driving iPhone sales, he notes, are the reduced prices for the earlier models, the iPhone 4 and 3GS. Some carriers are even offering the latter model free on contracts, a first for the iPhone. If anything, Wu notes that demand is still outstripping supply for all models, even though there has been some improvements in production capacity.

The numbers provide a stark contrast to the woes of companies like HTC and RIM, which are struggling to find buyers for its products during this crucial holiday sales season.

In tablets, Wu, like others, believes that the Kindle Fire is putting pressure on the rest of the tablet market. In Wu’s case, he thinks that it will mean Apple will not hit previously-set sales targets for its iPad. The device from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is selling for $199, compared to iPad models starting at $499.

The Fire is only currently being sold in the U.S., which Apple’s largest market for tablets at the moment. But Apple could be seeing some tablet sales problems in another market where it plays big, China, where it has just lost a trademark case over using the name iPad, a name that was registered by Taiwanese company Proview Electronics in several countries between 2000 and 2004. As the FT notes, while Apple and Proview signed a deal for the name in 2006, they were disputing whether that deal covered China. That could now mean potential injunctions on devices across the country if Apple does not sign a settlement with the company.

Ironically, the other big force that will keep down iPad sales, predicts Wu, will be something a little close to home: another Apple product. The MacBook Air, the smallest version of Apple’s laptop, sells for twice as much as an iPad but Wu believes that despite this price difference, there will be enough Apple fans out there ready to purchase it over the tablet to get the extra features such as Flash storage and a physical keyboard.

Overall, Wu expects Apple to post quarterly revenue of $37.7 billion with $10 in EPS against his previous forecast of $37.1 billion and $9.52 in EPS. Apple’s guidance is $37 billion in revenue and $9.30 in EPS.

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The charge has long been expected: in its last quarterly earnings in September, RIM had already noted that PlayBooks were selling below earlier forecasts, with only 200,000 devices shipped.

But it’s not all bad news: the statement reiterated something we have heard before from the company: RIM is remaining committed to the tablet market for the longer run, citing increasing demand for its tablets.

That increasing demand in the last few months may well have been because of the many promotions that we’ve seen, offering PlayBooks at big discounts to their original prices of just under $500.

It looks like there may more of that aggressive discounting, and more marketing in general, to come: “The Company now believes that an increase in promotional activity is required to drive sell-through to end customers,” RIM notes in today’s announcement, also making a not-so-direct reference to Amazon’s sub-$200 Fire tablet and the massively discounted TouchPads from HP (NYSE: HPQ) in the “shifts in the competitive dynamics of the tablet market.”

What’s not clear is whether RIM is effectively now preparing itself to sell these devices at a loss, as Amazon and HP have done, just to get them out into the field to establish some semblance of market share in the face of continuing domination from the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPad.

One of the bigger stumbling blocks for the PlayBook, in addition to price, has been its functionality: those who want to use their BlackBerry email on PlayBooks need to have their smartphones physically tethered to the PlayBook to make the service work. Other popular BlackBerry features like BBM don’t feature on the tablet at all. The updated QNX operating system, which may have gone some way to adding this functionality, was expected by now but it won’t be coming out until February 2012. (Those who buy the PlayBook now will get an upgrade to QNX 2.0 free of charge, the company noted.)

Also provided today was a little bit of a preview of what we might see in RIM’s Q3 results, which will be out December 15. RIM says that it has sold 150,000 PlayBook tablets into the channel in Q3, and it says that its internal data indicates that sell-through of those devices was even higher than that amount. It also noted that it has shipped 14.1 million BlackBerry smartphones for the quarter, which is in line with previous guidance of between 13.5 million and 14.5 million.

But it also admitted that revenues will be lower than previous guidance of $5.3 billion - $5.6 billion, partly because of the PlayBook charge and because of ongoing costs related to the service outage from this past autumn. Earnings per share will also be at the lower end of its forecast, it said.

Looking ahead, RIM is not holding out huge hopes for Q4, with shipments to be lower than those of Q3, because of lower-than-expected sell-through of shipments from the third quarter (that inventory overhang getting corrected again, it seems), and lower demand in general for RIM’s devices. In line with that the company also added that it no longer expects to meet its full-year guidance for earnings per share, either.

All in all, it looks like year that RIM would like to close off sooner rather than later to look ahead for a brighter 2013.

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Revenues were $1.89 billion, down from $1.90 billion this time last year. The company also saw net losses of $6.6 million for the quarter, or $0.17 per share, missing the Street’s expected earnings of $0.02 per share.

Barnes & Noble is trying hard to draw customers into its stores: It’s heavily promoting its in-store Nook customer support, adding “Digital Shops” to select stores and running special promotions, like one with James Patterson, to pull shoppers in. CEO William Lynch recently called retail stores “our biggest competitive advantage,” yet it’s unclear how well this efforts are working: Store sales decreased by 1 percent in the quarter, and physical book sales declined, though the company said those sales “were positively affected by the liquidation of the remaining Borders stores.” Barnes & Noble expects in-store sales to pick up over the holidays, and said “comparable store sales increased 10.9 percent” at B&N stores over Thanksgiving weekend.

Sales at BN.com increased 17 percent from this time last year, to $206 million from $177 million. (BN.com sales were $198 million in Q1 2012.) Nook business across the company, “including sales of digital content, device hardware and related accessories,” increased 85 percent in the quarter year-on-year, to $220 million, “on a comparable sales basis”—but, as Publishers Marketplace points out, Nook sales were $277 million in Q1 2012. In an investor call following the report, Lynch attributed the disparity to seasonal variation, and said the company expects to sell “millions” of Nook devices in Q3 2012.

release

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