Sprint and T-Mobile US helped boost Nokia Networks’ financial results last quarter. Nokia said today that its fourth-quarter North American sales increased 95% over last year. Nokia is an LTE vendor to both Sprint and T-Mobile US, and both carriers are in the process of building out their LTE networks.
Nokia’s positive report on the North American market stands in sharp contrast to a report from its larger rival Ericsson, released earlier this week. Ericsson said that its sales to North American operators have slowed. Ericsson is a primary vendor to Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, and both of those carriers are nearing completion of their LTE buildouts.
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Qualcomm reported a 7% increase in revenue and a 38% jump in operating income for the most recent quarter, but warned investors about the second half of the year.
“We have lowered our revenue outlook for our semiconductor business for the second half of the fiscal year and lowered our EPS expectations,” the company said in a statement. “These changes reflect our revised expectations related to OEM mix, sales to a large customer and heightened competition in China.”
That “large customer” is widely believed to be Samsung, the world’s leading smartphone vendor. Samsung has relied on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors to power many of its devices, but is steadily increasing the performance of its own Exynos chip line. Indeed, Samsung’s most recent earnings report highlighted the strength of its semiconductor business.
Samsung’s device business is another story. The smartphone giant is stumbling as it encounters nimble Chinese rivals in Asia and the wildly popular iPhone 6 in developed markets. Since mobile devices are Samsung’s largest business, this weakness has impacted the company’s overall performance. Samsung said that during the most recent quarter, sales were down 10% and operating profit fell a whopping 36%.
