Amazon Revenue Climbs 22%

For the fourth quarter, Amazon reported its revenues climbed 22 percent, but net income dropped 45 percent. The poor earnings didn’t faze investors, who sent the company’s stock higher following the release of the company’s quarterly financial report.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Danielle Kucera reported, “Fourth-quarter sales climbed 22 percent to $21.3 billion, the Seattle-based company said yesterday in a statement. Analysts on average had projected $22.2 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Operating margin in North America widened to 5 percent from 2.9 percent a year earlier. Shares rose as much as 12 percent in extended trading.”

InformationWeek’s Charles Babcock added, “For 2012 as a whole, Amazon reported a loss of $39 million, compared to net income of $631 million in 2011. For the fourth quarter, net income was down 45% to $97 million from $177 million the year before.”

Andrea Chang with the Los Angeles Times noted, “It was a good Christmas for Amazon’s Kindle family. The company said that for the second year in a row, its tablet was the most popular item for customers, with the Kindle Fire HD the ‘No. 1 bestselling, most gifted and most wished-for product’ across the company’s merchandise lineup. ‘At year-end, Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Fire, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle held the top four spots on the Amazon worldwide bestseller charts since launch,’ the company said.”

Peter Cohan with Forbes commented, “Amazon (AMZN) reports disappointing revenues and profits and its stock soars 10%. But when Apple (AAPL) meets revenue targets and beats profit forecasts, its shares plunge by 12%. Why does Wall Street seem to love Amazon, but flee Apple? Amazon’s low cost producer strategy is paying off; while Apple’s differentiation strategy is losing ground.”

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020