Sound familiar? Ultra-cheap unlimited plans are doing well (in some cases, too well) for everyone that's offering them these days, and it seems that Virgin is no exception to the rule. Following the April 15 launch of its $49.99 unlimited plan, the company announced during its earnings call this week that it's seen a five-times-over boost in unlimited plan adds (yeah, bargain pricing will do that), which dovetails nicely with the MVNO's claim earlier in the year that the crappy economy really set it up for big wins in '09. Notably, the quarter saw income rise 301 percent year-over-year to $19.1 million while operating revenues rose 2 percent to $337.3 million, so things are looking up for these guys just months after financials were looking weak -- so strong, in fact, that they've revised their full year cash flow and earnings upwards. Does this mean we get new Helio gear soon?

[Via mocoNews]

Some good news, please, Sony Ericsson? Anything? Perhaps a surprise Idou ship date? You desperately need something to counter this dismal quarterly report you just dropped on a bad news-saturated public, showing a net loss of €293 million (about $382 million) in the three-month period ending March 31 -- more than €100 million more than the amount you shed in the quarter prior. Despite reassurances to the contrary, we suspect that neither Sony nor Ericsson are prepared to tolerate red ink out of their joint venture forever, and it doesn't help that you've put Android on the back burner indefinitely. What's more, we thought your staff might be able to exhale now that the "cost saving program" to curtail spending by €300 million by cutting 2,000 jobs is complete, but you've coupled the bleak report with the announcement of an additional 2,000 cuts. Your shipped units are off a staggering 35 percent year over year, to boot; maybe the "good" news -- and we're really reaching here -- is that your European rivals are sharing in your pain right about now. Chins up, guys, and get some quality product out of the labs.

Things may not be entirely awesome for most operators these days, but at least Vodafone's making some cash in this cash-strapped market. According to its most recent quarterly results, the outfit has notched a 14 percent increase in revenue, which was helped by the weak pound and exceptional sales in India. More specifically, it realized sales of £10.47 billion ($14.9 billion) compared to £9.16 billion ($13.06 billion) a year prior. Also of note, Voda was thanking data revenue profusely, as said category rose over 25 percent on an organic basis. Nevertheless, the good news prompted it to raise its expectations for the next quarter, which ain't happening too often these days. All the minutiae is parked in the read link.

Verizon managed to pull off an impressive 15 percent growth in revenue in the fourth quarter of the year thanks in large part to its wireless unit, but its closest rival -- AT&T -- didn't manage to come across the same good fortune. Contrasting to its strong Q3, reported earnings per share fell 10 cents in Q4 versus the year prior, making for a nearly 20 percent drop; on the upside, full-year EPS still rose from $1.97 to $2.16 on the strength of 2008's first three quarters. The last three months of the year saw some 1.9 million iPhone 3G activations, 40 percent of which were new to the carrier -- not bad -- and data revenues consider to shoot through the roof, rising another 51.2 percent. Might as well invest the revenue you do have into beefing up that data network now that you've got everyone hooked on it, eh, guys?

Nokia has announced its financial figures for 2008, and while the news is predictably not good, it is a bit better than we've seen from other players in the mobile space. The company's overall sales were down 19 percent in Q4 of 2008 to €12.7 billion, while sales of devices and services were down 27 percent to €8.1 billion. Perhaps more troublingly it lost ground in the market share race, maintaining its number one position but dropping from 40 percent down to 37. While Nokia doesn't exactly see any bright light at the end of this economic tunnel just yet, it does at least think it won't lose any further ground in terms of market share. We'd love to hear what the good folks at Palm have to say about that.

[Warning: PDF read link]

For the vast majority of mobile makers, the past few months have been ones they'd love to forget. For HTC, it could actually throw a party in remembrance. The outfit responsible for the Touch Pro / Diamond, Touch HD and T-Mobile G1 (among others) has reportedly witnessed its revenues skyrocket to a record high of around $528.6 million in November, which is up nearly 11% sequentially and 22.1% on the year. Oh HTC, just think how much higher that figure would be if you'd loose the Touch HD on US soil...

[Via WMPowerUser, image courtesy of CNET]

Remember when we used to write about Palm in order to talk about its devices and / or operating system(s)? Man, those were the days. Now, it just seems like one sadness-filled report after another, and just days after hearing that it would be cutting an undisclosed amount of employees in order to trim operating expenses, in comes even more doom and gloom courtesy of its preliminary Q2 (fiscal year 2009) results. The company is expecting to record revenues ranging between $190 million to $195 million, far short of the $331 million Wall Street had been counting on. The shortfall was blamed on "a difficult economic environment [which had] greatly intensified the negative impact on product sales." Of course, the visionary Ed Colligan (CEO) still maintains that by reducing its cost structure it can "launch next-generation products as planned," but seriously, why should we believe that line now? Time to put up or shut up, Palm.

[Via CNET, image courtesy of PalmFocus]

2008 has generally treated Espoo pretty well, but every rose has its thorn -- and for Nokia, that thorn might just end up being the third quarter. The company has now revised its Q3 market share estimate downward, now predicting a slip from Q2 rather than the flat line it'd been suggesting before; cited reasons include a "tactical decision to not meet certain aggressive pricing of some competitors," generally fierce competition (particularly on the low end), and the delayed launch of an unnamed midrange handset. In justifying its failure to meet market pricing head-on in every market segment, Nokia says it's only going to play that game where it thinks it's profitable to do so, and for what it's worth, it still expects to ship about 10 percent more devices in 2008 than it did in 2007. What's more, they say they expect to meet the rest of their expected launch dates in '08 -- so it looks like every night has its dawn after all.

[Via mocoNews]

Okay, AT&T, we get it, you've finally figured out how to pitch data services to your subscriber base. Good for you! Last quarter saw a nice boost in data revenue for the megacarrier, likely due to a proliferation of 3G-compatible handsets that make mobile byte consumption less painful -- not to mention the fact that virtually every iPhone customer is signed up for a data plan -- and they're at it again this quarter with a staggering 52 percent bump in cash flow from data alone (which includes messaging, but still a sobering stat). Overall, revenue from the wireless division was met with a 15.8 percent gain, thanks in part to a net subscriber gain of 1.3 million, giving AT&T a grand total of 72.9 million heads. They'll still be dwarfed when the Verizon-Alltel thing goes down, but don't be down on yourself, AT&T -- there's nothing wrong with being number two. Honest.

[Via mocoNews]

Virgin Mobile's warnings of a bleak quarter were pretty dead-on, with a mere 17,772 net adds coming on board during the three-month time frame ending March 31 -- not quite the blockbuster 309,721 reported in the same period a year ago. Similarly, revenue and income both took a dive, supposedly in part due to a big marketing push focused on the MVNO's new pricing plans. If there's a silver lining on the dark, rumbling cloud, though, it's that the CEO believes they'll start to see some positive growth again in the third quarter after a weak second (for his sake, we hope he's right). Also notable was a mention that although the company had no strategic partnerships, alliances, or investments to announce, it was definitely open to "non-organic growth" in the form of another MVNO or "capability." Wonder what he may have been talking about there?

[Via mocoNews]

It looks like it's a surprisingly good time to be a behemoth US carrier, with both AT&T and Verizon reporting some pretty aggressive profits in the first quarter of 2008 in the face of a flagging economy. Many of Verizon's results closely mirror AT&T's actually, with data revenue absolutely destroying the numbers from a year ago -- up 48.9 percent year over year, in Big Red's case. As we can see from Verizon's own documentation here, they're tooting their horn against their arch-nemesis with more net adds, a slightly better ARPU, lower churn, and lower cost per customer, with service revenue and total subs (of course) being AT&T's big wins. Whether the momentum can be kept up through a challenging '08 remains to be seen, but it's a solid start for the nation's number two. Hit the gallery below for a big shot of Verizon's message to employees regarding the results.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

The royalty, lawsuit, and chipset machine better known as Qualcomm has gone public with its digits for the second quarter of fiscal 2008, and to sum things up, it's all looking pretty rosy. At $2.61 billion, revenue was up a solid 17 percent year over year -- up 7 from the previous quarter -- and income totaled $766 million, up 6 percent year over year. That works out to 47 cents worth of diluted earnings per share, a 9 percent improvement over the same period a year ago. The MediaFLO division still isn't in the black, though, with its Qualcomm Strategic Initiatives parent reporting a loss of 2 cents per share and $76 million worth of operating expenses in the quarter, "primarily related" to the mobile TV unit. Guess there's probably a little pressure for the AT&T launch to go smoothly, swiftly, and profitably, eh? [Warning: PDF link]

[Via mocoNews]

Economic downturn and Sprint woes be damned, because AT&T's not hearin' a bit of it. The company's wireless unit -- which also happens to be the largest carrier in the country -- announced that it put up some serious numbers in the first quarter of 2008, growing revenue 18.3 percent year over year for a grand total of $11.8 billion. It tacked on 1.3 million new subscribers in the quarter, an 8.7 percent improvement in net gain over the same period in 2007, and grew ARPU by 2 percent in that time. Perhaps most eye-widening, though, is the fact that wireless data revenue grew a boggling 57.3 percent over the last year, thanks in part to the 620 million and 44 billion multimedia and text messages sent in the three-month span, respectively. Needless to say, the wireless division's looking just a little more... shall we say, "dynamic" than the wireline group at the moment, as recent job moves would indicate.

[Via mocoNews]

Well, it looks like the aggressively priced unlimited action really didn't come a moment too soon. We're no economists here, but it doesn't take rocket science, a Ph.D., collegiate level maths, or even a fancy calculator to crunch the cold, hard numbers coming out of Sprint Nextel's fourth quarter earnings call. For starters, the number three carrier in the US reported a net loss of nearly $29.5 billion, which -- get this -- is more than the combined value of its outstanding stock. Let us reiterate for emphasis and drama value: Sprint lost more money in the fourth quarter of 2007 than the company is worth. Wow. If it's any consolation, the staggering figure is largely due to a $29.7 billion write-down of Nextel's value, which as the Wall Street Journal lays out, makes the 2005 merger officially a "Deal From Hell." With postpaid subscribers continuing to migrate to other carriers, there's no telling how to stop the hemorrhaging -- especially if the fresh $99 unlimited plan doesn't end up doing the trick -- but something tells us the move to Kansas isn't going to magically patch it all up.

Nokia isn't the only manufacturer going the opposite direction of Motorola at the moment. LG managed to ship 23.7 million phones in the fourth quarter of 2007, a 40 percent improvement over the same period in 2006; following a trends across the industry, though, its revenue was up considerably less -- a mere 12 percent -- thanks to freefalling handset prices worldwide. The company says that a healthy portion of its success can be attributed to the good fortunes it has seen with Verizon's Venus and Voyager and with the Viewty throughout Europe. Things are looking good for 2008, too -- LG predicts that it'll ship a whopping 100 million handsets throughout the year, which if true would represent a 25 percent increase over 2007's numbers. As it stands, LG slides in with 7.1 percent of the global phone market share, slotting it fifth among the top five manufacturers (nothing new there) and about 2 percent behind number four, Sony Ericsson. Best of luck in the new year, dudes.