Jitterbug Touch-Screen, Flip Phones Give Seniors More Options

Two new Jitterbug mobile phones—the touch-screen Smart and the traditional button-style, folding Flip—are now available from GreatCall, which offers mobile phones and service plans aimed at senior citizens who want easy-to-use devices without having to commit to service contracts. The Smart phone features a 5.5-inch, color, touch-screen display, modern looks and data capabilities, while the Flip phone features a 3.2-inch color HVGA TFT internal display, a 1.44-inch external color display and no Web searching capabilities. Monthly no-contract mobile service plans for the phones start at $14.99 for 200 minutes of talk, plus $3.00 for 300 texts, while data plans for the Smart handset start at $2.49 for 40MB. Data plans are not available for the Flip handset, which is not data-capable. Both phones are also available with premium calling plans that include GreatCall’s 5Star services, which connect callers with help in emergencies, 24/7 health information services and other extra-cost features. Peruse this eWEEK slide show for more details on the Jitterbug Smart and Flip phones.

Source: eWeek

The Agile CFO: Navigating Economic Uncertainty with Data Insights

Adaptive Insights, a leader in cloud corporate performance management (CPM), released its global CFO Indicator Q1 2016 report, revealing that while chief financial officers (CFOs) remain worried about growing economic volatility, the vast majority of the 377 CFOs surveyed remain confident in their forecasts, and believe that the combination of big data, analytics, and scenario planning will likely be the key to navigating their organizations through the current financial uncertainty.

Enabling them to accelerate the pace of change and remain agile, scenario planning is viewed by 48% of CFOs as the activity that will provide the most strategic value to their organizations during a downturn. Seventy-eight percent believe that applying financial data analysis to achieve profitability will provide the most strategic value overall to their organizations. Other key findings in the report include:

High forecasting confidence: 85% of CFOs feel moderately, very, or completely confident in their forecasts for the first half of 2016
Strong trust in the value of big data and analytics: 43% believe big data and analytics will have the single biggest effect on their future role
Agility highly valued: 59% rank transformation and innovation experience as the second most beneficial attribute to their performance — second only to technical and analytical skills (65%)

A strategic CFO is an agile CFO — one who can pivot on a dime and react decisively regardless of what the future holds,” said Robert S. Hull, founder and chairman at Adaptive Insights. “When the financial outlook seems unclear, planning for multiple scenarios can significantly contribute to agility. While transformation and innovation experience helps inspire myriad possible outcomes, technical and analytical skills can be applied to more rapidly model multiple actionable plans — helping financial leaders to remain agile as they navigate even the most turbulent markets.”

Technology Savvy CFOs Chart Course in Turbulent Markets

Driven by such factors as potential changes in regulatory requirements and taxation laws, economic uncertainty is the only certainty for today’s CFO. In fact, potential changes in regulatory requirements alone is driving 64% of CFOs to plan for multiple outcomes. It’s no surprise then that scenario planning has been identified as a key task for driving strategic, agile decision-making.

To support strategic activities, 56% of CFOs indicated that they were either very or completely likely to invest in dashboards and analytics and identified cloud-based, or SaaS, solutions as their preference. According to the study, CFOs estimate that 33% of their IT infrastructure is SaaS today, and they forecast this to grow to 60% of their infrastructure in 4 years. CFOs cited collaboration (24%) as the top reason for implementing SaaS solutions, followed by less reliance on IT (21%), and significant cost savings (17%).

And with growing reliance on technology and scenario planning, CFOs are not only feeling confident in their forecasting capabilities but also in their use of technology. Ninety-three percent report they are moderately, very, or extremely proficient in technology.

Shifting Priorities for CFOs

While most CFOs (93%) see compliance as their top priority today, only 62% see this as a priority three years from now. Rather, over the next three years, they expect to begin focusing on talent management (78%) and transforming financial data into intelligence to drive growth (77%). Tied for third in the study, both at 74%, are understanding how to leverage IT to take advantage of evolving market opportunities and overseeing corporate governance.

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Source: insideBigData

dPaaS: A Disruptive Force in the Integration Space

In this special guest feature, Rob Consoli, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Liaison Technologies, makes a case for the benefits of a data-centric approach to integration called dPaaS (Data Platform as a Service), an integration and data management platform that is fundamentally different from traditional approaches and offers a number of advantages. He brings over 25 years of technology industry experience and has a demonstrated track record of successfully building teams and helping growth-oriented companies navigate cultural and process transitions as they expand operations and global reach. In this pivotal role, Rob leads Liason’s North American efforts to strategically position and sell the company’s cloud-based integration and data management solutions, as well as increase its sales to meet the company’s growth objectives.Consoli holds a Master of Science from Southern Methodist University and a Bachelor of Science from Auburn University.

Let’s daydream for a moment: if you were to hit the lottery tomorrow, what would you do with the money? Would you bury it in small amounts all over the back yard? Maybe stash some under the mattress or in the freezer?

Or, would you invest it in some well-thought out mutual funds, stocks or maybe even a worthy startup as a venture capitalist? Perhaps even donate to some worthy non-profit causes?

My guess is you’d opt for the latter approach, recognizing that simply having the money isn’t nearly as valuable as putting the money to work in a smart way. The fragmented approach of scattering a few hundred dollars here and there would provide no value, prevent you from realizing the full benefit of the windfall and put you at tremendous risk of theft or loss.

Surprisingly, many modern businesses are still operating with a fragmented approach to their data akin to stashing it away in small amounts all over the backyard and around the house. With multiple applications all collecting and storing their own data within these specific silos, the data is locked away inside these applications.

In aggregation, the data has tremendous value. The ability to make correlations and comparisons across various data sets and characteristics could reveal incredibly valuable insights to improve business success.

But, the reality is, making those integrations to aggregate and use the data effectively is extremely difficult, and it becomes increasingly more so every day as new applications and their related data sets get added to the mix.

While every company knows their data is an extremely valuable asset—it has even become THE most valuable for some—many are discovering that more data doesn’t necessarily equate to more “information.” In fact, without proper handling and analysis, data is just bits and bytes offering almost no value on its own. It must be elevated, analyzed and understood with context in order to have value. This is why, despite an abundance of data, information is still scarce for a lot of businesses.

Many factors have contributed to the data explosion over the last few years: the deconstruction of large, monolithic applications which are being replaced or supplemented by multiple niche SaaS applications; the explosion in mobile data and social media, and the Internet of Things are some of the biggest.

Unfortunately, this influx is making it harder than ever to perform the integration and data management operations required to turn data into actionable information. I blame the traditional application-centric integration methodology for this, which requires that businesses grow ever-increasing numbers of tentacles between applications. The problem with this approach is that converting data into information is extremely complex, requiring monumental effort in order to extract, cleanse, de-duplicate and harmonize the data from multiple applications in preparation for running analytics algorithms against it. A couple of months and a million dollars later, you finally get the information that you anecdotally already knew.

And, worse yet, this only solves the temporary challenge. With every new application or data set added to the technology stack, the entire process must be repeated. You’re right back to square one, and every single initiative requires the same large investment of time,  resources and capital to achieve the stand-alone goal. Nothing about this process is future-ready.

Fortunately, a change is in the air. A new way of approaching integration—a data-centric methodology—is picking up steam and poised to fundamentally answer the question, “How can I better integrate my systems to produce actionable information and not be continuously distracted by the minutiae of integrating application tentacles?”

This new data-centric approach to integration is called dPaaS (Data Platform as a Service). dPaaS is an integration and data management platform that is fundamentally different from traditional approaches and offers the following advantages.

• Integration delivered as managed services – This includes people, platform and processes to manage businesses’ integration needs, whether that’s integrating end points behind the firewall to external businesses, or connecting application to application in the cloud. Why integration as managed services? So that businesses can focus on what matters most: producing and acting on information versus being in the ever-changing business of integration.
• Unified integration and data management– Traditionally, integration and data management at large organizations have required two Centers of Excellence, two teams and two sets of tools. But with today’s mandate to find insights in real time, this is no longer tenable. dPaaS has an underlying schema-less Big-Data-based repository that overcomes the challenges of storing and processing unlimited data in order to elevate it to actionable information at the right time, for the right people.
• Compliance – The protection of personally identifiable information (PII), payments-related data and personal health information (PHI) are paramount in any business application. A dPaaS solution offers baked-in functionalities, infrastructure, processes and controls that comply with government and industry standards such as PCI DSS and HIPAA. Again, this built-in compliance posture future-proofs the investment: you may not need compliance now, but when you do add data that requires protection, the dPaaS platform will be ready.
• Data visibility – In an ideal scenario, data should be fluid so that, with the right context, it can be molded into an information model that is defined at consumption time (much like water that assumes the shape of its container). However, the data consumer should always have full visibility into how the data assumed its current shape. Data lineage that stores the different states of the data in an immutable log is fundamental to dPaaS architecture and a valuable differentiator as compared to traditional data management solutions.

If yours is among the smart businesses looking to use information, and not merely data, as a disruptive and innovative force to gain an edge over competitors—which you should be—now is the time to give dPaaS a look. By providing a comprehensive, end-to-end approach to data integration and management, dPaaS allows your company to leverage the efficiencies and insights today, and have a future ready solution to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.

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Source: insideBigData

MapR Announces Free Stream Processing On-Demand Training for Real-time Analytics and IoT Applications

MapR Technologies, Inc., provider of the Converged Data Platform, announced at Kafka Summit 2016 it is now offering stream processing training via MapR Academy’s free On-Demand Training program.  The new training enables Apache Kafka developers to extend their real-time analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Developers can also benefit with MapR Streams that provides Kafka-compatibility, integrated security and multi-data center support as an integrated component of the MapR Converged Data Platform.

Companies interested in Apache Kafka will immediately see the value of our growing library of free on-demand training courses that focus on data-in-motion for real-time analytics and IoT applications,” said Suzanne Ferry, vice president of global education and training, MapR Technologies.  “MapR Academy has created these new courses to deliver best-in-class professional training on critical big data technologies like Kafka and MapR Streams to both development and IT operations teams.”

MapR Streams is the newly released, global event publish and subscribe framework that is integrated directly into the MapR Converged Data Platform. MapR converges the power of Hadoop, Spark and other open source technologies into one unified, enterprise-grade platform for streaming, real-time database capabilities, and enterprise storage.

Stream processing expert data Artisans recently tested MapR Streams with Apache Flink performance with the Yahoo! stream processing benchmark and it resulted in MapR Streams delivering an incredible 10 million events per second with 3X replication.

We benchmarked MapR Streams with Apache Flink and were blown away by the results,” said Kostas Tzoumas, co-founder and CEO, data Artisans. “Ten million events per second is incredible throughput, and the 3X replication adds a level of data protection that will please enterprise IT shops.”

The free curriculum from MapR based on stream processing, includes:

• DEV 350 – Streams Essentials training provides developers a broad understanding of the core concepts behind stream processing and prepares them to begin using MapR Streams.  Sample topics include MapR Streams overview, use cases, Streams architecture, core components, and summary of “life of a message.”

• DEV 351 – Streams Development training gives developers the core concepts necessary to build simple MapR Streams applications as well as a basic framework for building and configuring Stream Processing applications. Sample topics include creating a stream, developing/configuring stream producers and consumers, describing properties, and options for producers and consumers.

More than 50,000 professionals have enrolled in MapR Academy’s On-Demand Training for an easy way to receive free online Hadoop training. The free curriculum also covers Apache Spark, Apache Drill, and other technologies. The courses offer the same depth and content as instructor-led training courses, and include hands-on exercises, labs and quizzes to ensure an effective, interactive learning experience.

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Source: insideBigData

Mobile Workplaces Boost Employee Engagement, Productivity

Six in ten employees said mobile technology makes them more productive, while more than four in ten believe it causes their creativity to rise.

There is a measurable link between more mobile-first working environments and an increase in employee engagement, according to a global Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) study sponsored by Aruba Networks.The study showed that companies rated by employees as pioneers in how they support mobile technology saw a rise in productivity (16 percent), creativity (18 percent), satisfaction (23 percent), and loyalty (21 percent), when compared to organizations that were poorly rated at supporting mobile technology.Six in ten employees said mobile technology makes them more productive, while more than four in ten (45 percent) believe it causes their creativity to rise.The survey also found 42 percent of employees say that the ability to access information quickly and easily has the greatest impact on their productivity levels.

Currently, 54 percent of companies are providing access to the company network from any mobile device to support working anywhere in the office or remotely.

“Without careful planning, IT could face some pitfalls. The first is around corporate security. Additionally, businesses and CIOs need to be clear on acceptable use policies that accompany this newfound freedom of the mobile workforce,” Chris Kozup, vice president of marketing for Aruba, told eWEEK. “Many companies have well-ingrained systems of measurement – think performance management – tied to the old guard of fixed working. In other words, management systems must adapt to the new style of working or risk a high level of conflict within the organization.”Simply put, a manager who has a 9-to-5 or time card mentality could be at odds with a new mobile-optimized working environment where employees should be evaluated based on their output and results, rather than time spent physically at their desk.”While the technology is widely available to enable a mobile experience, the business must not lose sight of the need to reskill managers to adjust as well,” Kozup explained.The ability to work anytime, anywhere is seen as having the single-biggest impact on employee productivity, with 49 percent of respondents saying it has the greatest impact on their productivity.”Mobile technologies and working styles will continue to dominate over the coming years. Common devices like desk phones will join the likes of the cassette tape as technologies of yesteryear,” Kozup said. “This will be driven by the next-generation digital workforce who use mobile devices in ways that are beyond conventional. We are seeing our leading customers embrace digital workplaces in which they are often completely rethinking the concept of work. Most of these initiatives center on the need to move away from fixed working environments to far more open and collaborative workspaces.”
Source: eWeek

BYOD Security Management Still an Issue for Businesses

The Bitglass survey found just 14 percent of organizations have successfully deployed mobile application management (MAM) solutions.

Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of organizations, led by the financial services sector, support BYOD for all or some employees, according to a Bitglass survey of more than 800 cyber security professionals across five major industries.However, relatively few organizations are able to control access to corporate data, remotely wipe devices or enforce device encryption.The survey, which included respondents from financial services, technology, health care, government and education organizations, found just 14 percent have successfully deployed mobile application management (MAM) solutions.”The level of concern with respect to security in BYOD is really no different than with other types of IT systems,” Rich Campagna, vice president of products at Bitglass, told eWEEK. “Regulated industries such as healthcare and financial services require that large numbers of users handle personally identifiable information, and the success of their business depends on their ability to protect customer data. The fact that these users are often mobile and demand BYOD access makes security particularly challenging.”

He noted fewer than half of organizations are doing anything other than password protection on BYOD devices – even choosing to forego policy basics like remote wipe and encryption.

“It seems that in an effort to support the demands of mobile users, security has been thrown out the window,” Campagna said.The report found that 62 percent of healthcare organizations see compliance as a top security concern, due to HIPAA’s stringent requirements.Notably, organizations across all sectors were concerned with data leakage – including 81 percent of financial services organizations, 90 percent of health care organizations and 79 percent of education organizations.Higher education lagged behind other industries in enforcing essential risk-control measures–just 18 percent of those surveyed have access controls in place, and just 29 percent have the ability to remotely wipe devices.In addition, just 14 percent of organizations have adopted MAM tools since their introduction in 2010, with most respondents citing employee privacy concerns and usability issues as top challenges to adoption.”All too often, when we see employees pushback on MDM tools due to privacy, deployment challenges or user experience issues, a decision is made to allow that user to bypass those controls, prioritizing access over security,” Campagna said. “The root cause is the fact that the industry has tried to shoehorn a tool best suited for managed device security into BYOD.”The report also found that device encryption was supported in only 36 percent of educational institutions, 56 percent of financial services organizations and 57 percent of health care organizations.
Source: eWeek

Rubrik Strengthens Security in New Converged DM Appliance

Rubrik’s r528 provides users with complete on-site data backup and protection, data encryption at rest and in-flight, and rich data services at a global scale.

Rubrik, the rather impertinent startup that merely wants to replace in one day all conventional data backup-and-recovery point products that have taken 30-plus years for other companies to develop, has added more new functionality to its new-gen data-management system.The Palo Alto, Calf.-based company on April 26 unveiled what it described as the IT industry’s first security enhanced, converged data-management appliance. By converged, Rubrik means that if someone broke out all the functionality in the new Rubrik r528’s 2U-size box as separate software components, it would need a 20U-footprint to contain it all. In the past, single-purpose servers were standard; not so anymore.The r528 provides users with complete on-site data backup and protection, data encryption at rest and in-flight, and rich data services at a global scale, to go with a lot of other functionality. It can be configured to work with cloud systems.Security is a Priority

But the most important function Rubrik brings to data backup is security. This the r528 has in spades.

“With the amount of digital data projected to grow to 1 trillion gigabytes by 2020, and a growing trend in data breaches, it is imperative that businesses apply the highest security standards to all their data,” CEO and co-founder CEO Bipul Sinha said. “We developed the r528 to ensure data is encrypted both in transit across a network and at rest to meet the security needs of our enterprise and public sector customers.”Rubrik’s r528 appliance provides high-level encryption and security with the delivery of FIPS 140-2 Level 2 certified hardware. With self-encrypting HDDs and SSDs, flexible key management options, and physical tamper evidence, the r528 provides a high level of FIPS certification in the backup and recovery industry.The r528 is a 2U appliance with two commodity x86 nodes that protects up to 300-plus terabytes of source data and comes pre-configured with Rubrik Converged Data Management.What the New Appliance Brings to the TableKey benefits of the Rubrik platform, according to Sinha, include unlimited replication; a policy-driven management engine; recovery with near-zero RTO and elastic RPO; and action-oriented reporting.Ransomware is a rapidly growing criminal tactic that Rubrik mitigates with its system. In 2012, one of the largest regional banks in the United States “lost” its backups containing the personal account information for more than 260,000 customers. Thus, it is crucial for companies to take the necessary steps to protect data from end-to-end, not just where they think attacks may happen.  “Ransomware is a highly profitable crime, and there aren’t many reliable security-only based options to avoid this and mitigate risk,” Adam Goldberg, a member of Rubrik’s product management team, told eWEEK. “So we think that businesses can really change the game here and use secure on-site backups to eliminate the hostage situation that’s present with ransomware.”If you look at the recent Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital case (in which the hospital paid $17,000 to get its data restored), that’s just one example. Huge sums of money are being paid all over. IT needs to eliminate the divide between data protection and security, so they can always ensure access to their business-critical data. The r528 is our first step in that direction.”Top-Flight Builders of the ProductRubrik is built by key engineers behind Google, Facebook, VMware, and Data Domain.The company has raised more than $51 million from Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and enterprise IT luminaries, including John W. Thompson (Microsoft Chairman, Symantec Former CEO), Frank Slootman (ServiceNow CEO, Data Domain Former CEO), Dheeraj Pandey (Founder and CEO, Nutanix) and Mark Leslie (Leslie Ventures, Veritas Founding CEO).Rubrik appliances are globally available through the company’s solution partners. For more information, go here.
Source: eWeek

Machine Learning, AI Key to Google's Future, CEO Sundar Pichai Says

In a blog post Sundar Pichai shares his vision of Google’s future that will focus on machine learning, artificial intelligence, mobile computing and the cloud.

Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities of the sort displayed by Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo system when it recently beat one of the world’s top professionals at the ancient Chinese game of Go, will play a key role in Google’s future.That’s the view of CEO Sundar Pichai, who on April 28 shared the company’s high-level vision of the future with stockholders and the general public in a post on Google’s official blog.Usually it is Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin who provide the annual update. But this time, the task was left to Pichai, “since the majority of our big bets are in Google,” Page, who is now CEO of Google parent Alphabet, said in a brief note prefacing the blog. “I wanted to give him most of the bully-pulpit here to reflect on Google’s accomplishments and share his vision,” Page wrote.There was little in Pichai’s blog by way of specifics about the company’s direction. But it involves machine learning, AI, mobile computing and the cloud.

Much of Google’s efforts to make its search and related services more powerful and user-friendly in the years ahead are being driven by the company’s investments in AI and machine learning, Pichai said.

These technologies already have been implemented in applications such as voice search, Google Translate and spam filtering. “We’ve been building the best AI team and tools for years, and recent breakthroughs will allow us to do even more,” Pichai said pointing to AlphaGo as an example of the kind of virtual smarts the company is able to deliver.Google will parley its advances in these areas into making its search technology even more sophisticated and responsive than it already is, Pichai said. The goal is to evolve search into more of a smart assistance capability where users will be able to get help from Google based on context, situation and needs.“The average parent has different needs than the average college student. Similarly, a user wants different help when in the car versus the living room. Smart assistance should understand all of these things and be helpful at the right time, in the right way,” Pichai explained.Eventually machine learning and AI will help shape the way people accomplish daily tasks, how they travel and tackle bigger challenges like cancer diagnosis and climate change, Pichai said. He did not say how Google plans on using AI in these areas, but some current examples, such as Google’s work on autonomous vehicles, offer some pointers.Another major area of investment for Google is the mobile web, Pichai said. Mobile devices already are a major source of traffic for a majority of Google’s websites and the company has been working on making the use of mobile application a faster and smoother experience for users.Over the past year, Google has been working with developers, publishers and other stakeholders in the mobile ecosystem on projects such as Accelerated Mobile Pages and Progressive Web Apps, Google’s CEO said. Such efforts are geared towards enabling better mobile experience for everyone.The company has also been working on improving its Chrome browser for mobile devices, which in the four years since its launch is already used by 1 billion active mobile users, Pichai claimed.“Over time, the computer itself—whatever its form factor—will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world.”
Source: eWeek

LG Mobile Phone Revenue Drops 15.5% in Q1 2016 From Year Ago

Overall LG profits rose 65.5 percent, but its smartphone division faltered just before its latest LG G5 handset arrived on the market.

LG’s overall first-quarter profit for 2016 rose 65.5 percent compared to a year ago, but that intriguing rise was at least jarred by a 15.5 percent drop in the company’s smartphone revenue and a 12 percent drop in smartphone shipments in the quarter.LG reported an operating profit of $420.25 million (505.2 billion KRW) for Q1 2016, which is a 65.5 percent jump from the $277.45 million (305.2 billion KRW) brought in during the first quarter of 2015.Overall LG revenue for Q1 2016 was down, however, to $11.12 billion (13.36 trillion Korean Won) from the $12.72 billion (13.99 trillion KRW) brought in one year ago, according to the company’s financial figures, which were reported April 28.Sales for LG’s mobile phone division were disappointing, with revenue of $2.46 billion, (2.96 trillion KRW), which is down 15.5 percent from Q1 2015, according to LG. Smartphone shipments were also down, to 13.5 million units, which is 12 percent lower compared to a year ago and to the fourth quarter of 2015.

LG attributed the drops in mobile phone revenue and sales to “a result of the business entering the slow season as well as declining shipments of existing flagship models due to high interest in the recently announced LG G5.” The company said it expects that “competition in the smartphone market will continue to increase, leading to further price erosion which LG plans to counter with a strong global push for the modular LG G5 smartphone and new mass-tier models such as its X series.”

LG’s mobile division posted an operating loss of $168.2 million (202.2 billion KRW), “primarily due to increased marketing expenditures for the new LG G5 flagship smartphone,” the company reported.While the mobile division suffered, LG said it was bolstered by other divisions that performed well, including its home appliance and air solution products.”LG’s overall global sales and profitability are expected to improve in the second quarter, with double-digit growth in revenues and higher profitability anticipated as LG continues its premium-focused strategy with LG Signature products, the LG G5 smartphone and 4K Ultra HD OLED TVs,” the company said in a statement.Avi Greengart, an analyst with Current Analysis, told eWEEK that LG’s Q1 “mobile losses reflect investments in marketing the G5 smartphone ahead of launch,” but that the company was able to withstand those losses because of good performances in other divisions. “Fortunately, LG’s appliances and televisions are selling well, which gives the mobile group some cushion to invest up front in the hopes of seeing returns when G5 sales show up in the next quarter.” That’s not a guarantee of increased sales, however, he added. “There may not be much: not only is Samsung doing well in the premium smartphone space, making it harder for LG to succeed, but LG’s G5 is predicated on consumers buying into its modular design concept, and there are limited G5 add-ons available at launch.” Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told eWEEK that other than the mobile division, “LG’s financial performance in the past quarter gave investors something to smile about today, but the company admitted that it faces tough issues in the longer term.” With major mobile players, including Apple seeing sales erode, “the road ahead for LG looks rocky, at best,” said King. Jan Dawson, chief analyst for Jackdaw Research, agreed. “Back in 2013 and 2014, it looked like LG might have finally cracked its smartphone business–it was growing and even flirted with profitability for a while, but things have been going downhill since late 2014 and there’s no sign of improvement there,” he said. “It’s basically suffering from the same issues as most Android smartphone vendors–a lack of differentiation at the high end, and being undercut by budget Android smartphones at the low end, leaving it without much of a market. In a saturating global smartphone market, that’s a really tough spot to be in.”LG’s smartphone sales situation is in contrast to Samsung’s Q1 results, which were also announced on April 28. Samsung threw the dice in March and released its latest flagship Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge smartphones a month earlier than usual, which led to revenue and profit figures that are 6 percent and 12 percent higher than the same quarter one year ago. The news was finally good for the beleaguered smartphone, consumer appliance, display and semiconductor company, especially after a run of tough financial quarters over the past year as it fought tough competition from Apple’s iPhones and others.In the company’s first quarter of 2016, Samsung posted revenue of $43.8 billion (49.78 trillion Korean Won) and net income or profit of $5.58 billion (6.68 trillion KRW), which are up 5.7 percent from 47.12 trillion KRW in revenue and up 12 percent from 5.98 trillion KRW in profit from the same quarter one year ago. The 49.78 trillion KRM in revenue exceeded the 49 trillion KRW the company announced in early April when it released preliminary estimates based on early figures.Samsung’s mobile division, which includes smartphones, brought in 27.60 trillion KRW in Q1 2016, which is up from the 25.89 trillion KRW brought in one year ago. Profit for the mobile division was 3.89 trillion KRW, up from 2.74 trillion KRW one year ago. The company said it also saw good performance in its mobile division due to “strong sales and improved cost efficiency through the streamlining of mid-to-low-end smartphone lineups.”Samsung’s mobile phone results contrasted sharply with those of Apple, which earlier this week announced its Q2 2016 earnings that saw a quarterly decline in revenue for the first time since 2003. Apple reported revenue of $50.6 billion, 13 percent lower than the $58 billion the company posted one year ago. Net income was also down in Q2 to $10.5 billion from $13.6 billion a year ago as sales of the company’s flagship iPhone smartphones leveled off ending Apple’s enviable 13-year record of uninterrupted sales growth. Apple’s latest iPhone 6 models went on sale last September.
Source: eWeek

Samsung Smartphone Sales Help Hike Q1 2016 Profit, Revenue

The March release of Samsung’s latest Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge flagship phones apparently helped raise the company’s Q1 revenue and profit.

Samsung threw the dice in March and released its latest flagship Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge smartphones a month earlier than usual, which has apparently led to revenue and profit figures that are 6 percent and 12 percent higher than the same quarter one year ago.The news was finally good for the beleaguered smartphone, consumer appliance, display and semiconductor company, especially after a run of tough financial quarters over the past year as it fought stiff competition from Apple’s iPhones and others.In the company’s first quarter of 2016, Samsung posted revenue of $43.8 billion (49.78 trillion Korean Won) and net income or profit of $5.58 billion (6.68 trillion KRW), which are up 5.7 percent from 47.12 trillion KRW in revenue and up 12 percent from 5.98 trillion KRW in profit from the same quarter one year ago. The figures were announced by Samsung on April 28.The 49.78 trillion KRM in revenue exceeded the 49 trillion KRW the company announced in early April when it released preliminary estimates based on early figures.

The company’s earnings rise was “led by the early launch and successful sales of the flagship Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge (pictured), improved memory product mix, expanded 14nm supply of System LSI products and increased sales of OLED panels,” Samsung said in a statement.

The company’s mobile division, which includes smartphones, brought in 27.60 trillion KRW in Q1 2016, which is up from the 25.89 trillion KRW brought in one year ago. Profit for the mobile division was 3.89 trillion KRW, up from 2.74 trillion KRW one year ago. The company said it also saw good performance in its mobile division due to “strong sales and improved cost efficiency through the streamlining of mid-to-low-end smartphone lineups.”Samsung has been continuing in the last year to battle its way back from several tough financial quarters caused largely by cheaper phones from global competitors and shrinking sales as consumers waited to buy Apple’s latest iPhone 6 models when they went on sale last September.Several IT analysts told eWEEK that Samsung’s Q1 numbers brought relatively good news for the company.Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, said that the company’s year-over-year profit increase “handily beat analyst’s estimates” and was driven largely by sales of the new Galaxy S7 handsets. “That was notable since the new handsets didn’t become available until March, which is the last month of the quarter.”At the same time, Samsung “also seems less encumbered by weakening smartphone sales plaguing key competitors, like Apple,” said King. “Overall, Samsung enjoyed a strong first quarter but market conditions could mar the company’s performance later this year.”Another analyst, Rob Enderle of Enderle Group, said one reason for Samsung’s success in the quarter is that the company “tends to do demand-generation marketing much more aggressively on phones” than competitors such as LG “and it certainly paid dividends.”That sales marketing success by Samsung with its S7 and S7 Edge phones likely even caused lower sales for Apple’s competing iPhone 6 models, which earlier this week contributed to that company’s first quarterly revenue decline since 2003, said Enderle. “Samsung regularly out-markets their peers and generally outperforms them when they do this.  When they pull back on marketing they then tend to fall off particularly against Apple who has been historically far more consistent” in the past.Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research, told eWEEK that Samsung’s Q1 figures show that it “continues to recover somewhat from its toughest days.” The company is “still not growing enormously in smartphones, but the Galaxy S7 really seems to have helped stabilize things and improve its margins. This was the first quarter in almost two years in which mobile rather than semiconductors were the biggest contributor to margins, and that’s something of a milestone in the recovery of the mobile business.”Samsung’s latest Galaxy S7 Edge and S7 handsets, which debuted March 11, are water-resistant and are powered by Qualcomm quad-core 2.15GHz/1.6GHz processors for U.S. users and include 4GB of LPDDR4 memory, 32GB of built-in storage, microSD expansion slots, a 12-megapixel dual-pixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. The Galaxy S7 Edge features a 5.5-inch quad-HD Super AMOLED display and a screen that wraps around both right and left edges of the device, while the Galaxy S7 has a 5.1-inch quad-HD Super AMOLED display.
Source: eWeek