Bits Blog: Growth Returns to Tech, but Profits Will Not Be So Easy

Tool Kit: A Surge in Growth for a New Kind of Online Course

Available globally to hundreds of thousands of people at a time, these classes depend on highly sophisticated digital technology, yet they could not be simpler to use. Signing up takes less time than creating an iTunes account. You can create a user name and password and start exploring the rapidly expanding course offerings.

The major Web sites already provide dozens of courses, as diverse as basic calculus and European intellectual history. It is both new and experimental, and as much as MOOCs have evolved since beginning in recent years, enthusiasts expect many more changes. From an early focus on technical and scientific courses, for instance, offerings now include the humanities and social sciences.

While there are some significant differences among the major MOOC Web sites, they share several main elements. Courses are available to anyone with access to the Internet. They are free, and students receive a certificate of completion at the end. With rare exceptions, you cannot earn college credit for taking one of these courses, at least for now.

“For a decade, people have been asking, ‘How does the Internet change higher education,’ ” said Edward B. Rock, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is the institution’s senior adviser on open course initiatives. “This is the beginning. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.”

Navigating the world of MOOCs begins with three major Web sites.

EdX

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created this nonprofit joint venture in May 2012. It has already offered dozens of courses in subjects as diverse as physics, computer science, engineering, literature, ethics, law, medicine and economics.

Twenty-nine universities have signed up to participate, including the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Texas, Austin; Georgetown; Cornell; the Berklee College of Music; the University of Toronto; and the University of Kyoto.

Courses are offered for a designated period of time, with lectures and reading assignments provided in weekly segments. Videos of lectures are generally augmented with exercises, quizzes, labs and simulators. Like other platforms, edX emphasizes interactivity.

You can audit a course — meaning you don’t take exams or do writing assignments — or you can fulfill all of the requirements to earn a certificate of completion.

Each course’s home page provides an estimate of how many hours a week the course will require. Workloads vary widely. A Global History of Architecture, an M.I.T. class, requires at least five hours a week. Introduction to Computer Science, Harvard’s traditional introductory course, asks online students to complete eight problem sets, each of which will take 15 to 20 hours, along with two quizzes and a final project.

Coursera

Two computer science professors at Stanford began this commercial venture in April 2012. The original partners were Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan. Seventeen months later, Coursera has partnerships with 84 universities and offers more than 400 courses.

Yale, Duke, Wisconsin and the University of Chicago are among the participants, as are the University of Edinburgh and the École Polytechnique in France.

Because courses are free, Coursera hopes to generate revenue in other ways, like linking corporations with students who have learned specific skills. Coursera does not formally offer the option of auditing a class, but people certainly can. Anyone can simply watch the videos and do some, all or none of the reading and homework; you just would not receive a certificate at the end.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a Web site that offers short videos on academic subjects. It is the Khan Academy, not Kahn Academy.

Cisco to Cut 4,000 Jobs Despite Growth in Revenue

Cisco's revenue guidance for the current quarter was weaker than Wall Street expected, and shares fell sharply in extended trading.

The company's stock fell $2.51, or 9.5 percent, to $23.87 in extended trading after the results were released. The stock closed up 6 cents at $26.38 in the day's regular trading session.

Cisco Systems Inc. earned $2.27 billion, or 42 cents per share, in the three months that ended on July 27. That's up from $1.92 billion, or 36 cents per share, a year earlier.

Adjusted earnings were 52 cents per share in the latest quarter, squeaking past Wall Street's expectations by a penny. This figure excludes charges stemming from a patent settlement with TiVo and other one-time items.

Revenue rose 6 percent to $12.42 billion from $11.69 billion.

Analysts, on average, had expected revenue of $12.41 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

Cisco's performance is widely regarded as a bellwether for the technology industry. That's because the San Jose, California, company cuts a broad swath, selling routers, switches, software and services to corporate customers and government agencies. Cisco's fiscal quarters end a month later than most other major technology companies, giving it additional time to assess economic conditions.

Cisco's product orders grew 4 percent year-over-year, the same as in the third quarter of this year. Orders in the Americas region grew 5 percent, while Asia declined 3 percent due to economic challenges in the region, Chambers said. Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia increased 6 percent. On its own, Europe was up 9 percent.

Chambers said that economic conditions in Europe still "vary significantly" by region, with the north and the U.K. showing "very positive progress."

"We remain cautious, however, given the instability of the southern region," he added.

The caution is evident in Cisco's guidance. For the current quarter, the company said that said it expects revenue to grow 3 percent to 5 percent year-over-year. Analysts are expecting $12.72 billion, a 7 percent increase from last year's $11.9 billion.

Over the long term, Chambers said that the company still expects revenue to grow 5 percent to 7 percent, and added that Cisco is in a "better position in the market today than ever before."

T-Mobile US Reports Resurgent Customer Growth

The company on Thursday said it had gained 1.1 million customers, including 685,000 contract subscribers, in the last quarter. That compares with a loss of 557,000 contract subscribers, the most valuable type of customer, in the same period a year ago. The upswing was its largest customer growth in four years.

The company, based in Bellevue, Wash., started offering the iPhone in April, when it also began offering new phone plans that addressed common frustrations with wireless companies, like confusing contracts and expensive data plans.

“By fixing the things that drive them mad, like contracts and upgrades, and freeing them from the two-year sentences imposed on them by our competitors, they are choosing the new T-Mobile in unprecedented numbers,” John Legere, chief executive of T-Mobile US, said of his customers in a news release.

Over the last several years, T-Mobile lost many customers largely because it lacked the iPhone and they were unhappy with its service. But this year has been full of change at the company: it finally landed a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone, it began an overhaul of its network and it started offering lower-cost plans to lure customers from competitors. The company also added extra muscle in its merger with the smaller carrier MetroPCS, which was completed in May.

The change is costing T-Mobile. The company posted a loss of $16 million for the quarter, compared with a profit of $207 million in the same period a year ago. But it also reported revenue of $6.23 billion, up from $4.9 billion last year.

(A majority of the company is still owned by Deutsche Telekom, the German carrier. This quarter was the first time T-Mobile US reported earnings as a separate company after its merger with MetroPCS.)

The net income was above the expectations of Wall Street analysts. They had expected revenue of $6.01 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

In March, T-Mobile discontinued traditional two-year contracts, allowing customers to buy a smartphone for a lower upfront cost and adding the cost of the device to their monthly bill over two years. It also continued to offer plans with unlimited data, an option that the top two carriers, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, killed years ago.

In general, T-Mobile’s plans are also cheaper than its competitors’ — for $70 a month, a customer can have unlimited minutes, text messages and data. The plans offered by AT&T and Verizon cost about $100 a month or more.

T-Mobile expects the growth to continue. For the full year, it said it expected to add 1 million to 1.2 million contract subscribers.

In its effort to lure customers from competitors, the company has been working on its wireless network. It is far behind Verizon and AT&T in rolling out a faster fourth-generation network, called LTE. T-Mobile has LTE deployed in about 120 metropolitan areas, while Verizon has LTE in about 500 cities and AT&T has LTE in about 360 markets. The company will continue to expand the network throughout next year, according to Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s chief technology officer.

Bits Blog: LinkedIn’s Profits Soar as User Growth Accelerates

Bits Blog: Facebook’s Stock Soars Amid Rosy Growth Expectations

Sirius XM Reports Income and Subscriber Growth

Sirius XM said revenue rose 12 percent, $897 million, from the period a year earlier, but was lower than the $906 million analysts had predicted.

Net income increased 15 percent to $124 million, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization — adjusted to eliminate some charges including the effect of the 2008 merger between Sirius and XM — were $262 million, up 26 percent from a year earlier.

Sirius XM earned 2 cents a share, one cent less than analysts had predicted.

The company’s subscriber growth continued to be a bright spot, even after a rare price increase last year. It was the first time Sirius had raised the subscription rate; XM had done it once before. Sirius XM gained 453,000 subscribers in the quarter, bringing its total to 24.4 million. In the last two years its subscriber ranks have grown 19 percent.

“Sirius XM’s first-quarter results show a continuation of our trend of strong, profitable growth,” Mr. Meyer said in a statement.

One concern for investors, however, is an increase in “churn” rate, a measurement of subscriber turnover. In recent years, that number had been gradually reduced to 1.9 percent, but in the most recent quarter it was 2 percent.

Mr. Meyer, who had been Sirius’s president for sales and operations since 2004, was named interim chief executive in December after the departure of Mel Karmazin. He was appointed to the post permanently in a separate announcement on Tuesday by Gregory B. Maffei, who became chairman on April 10.

Mr. Maffei is the president and chief executive of Liberty Media, which since 2009 had been Sirius XM’s largest investor and took over the company, which is based in New York, last year by acquiring a majority of its shares.

Sirius XM shares rose 5.9 percent on Tuesday to close at $3.25.

Despite Sales Growth, Ericsson Profit Plunges

But shares in Ericsson, based in Stockholm, rose 3.4 percent on Wednesday to close at 79.60 kronor. Investors focused on underlying operating profits and comments by the chief executive, Hans Vestberg, who said he expected demand for new networks, its most lucrative business, to accelerate this year.

In the first three months of the year, 30 percent of Ericsson’s network equipment sales were made to the four big American network operators, a record for the Swedish company. Those companies are Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint and T-Mobile U.S.A., which are expanding or planning to expand their mobile broadband networks.

“The networks division is going in the right direction,” said Hakan Wranne, an analyst with Swedbank in Stockholm. “This is being driven of course very much by the U.S market, which is basically the four big customers. That is also a risk.”

Net profit fell to 1.2 billion kronor, or $180.7 million, in the three months through March from 8.8 billion kronor a year earlier, when profit was inflated by a one-time gain of 7.7 billion kronor from the sale of a 50 percent stake in SonyEricsson to Sony.

Sales in the first quarter rose 2 percent, to 52 billion kronor, led by a demand in North America and Southeast Asia, where sales rose 23 percent and 22 percent, respectively. That offset a 34 percent sales decline in China, Japan and South Korea, where the weakening Swedish currency and slowing network investments weighed on results.

Excluding these and other one-time effects, Ericsson’s operating income rose 50 percent in the period, to 2.1 billion kronor from 1.4 billion kronor a year earlier.

Ericsson’s biggest rival, Huawei of China, has been effectively blocked from selling equipment to American operators because of national security concerns by U.S. lawmakers, fears that the Chinese company says are unfounded.

The intense competition between Huawei and Ericsson has turned to Europe, pushing down equipment prices and profits for both companies.

In the European market, which Ericsson defines to include Russia and some of the former Soviet republics, quarterly sales rose 6.3 percent, to 11.9 billion kronor.

“What we have been seeing for several years now, particularly in Europe with the modernization and huge swap-outs of networks, is that those contracts have been taken by Ericsson and Huawei at very low margins,” said Mr. Wranne, the analyst.

Mr. Vestberg, the Ericsson chief executive, said during an interview that he expected operators in Europe, North America and parts of Asia to accelerate their equipment purchases in the second half of this year, as carriers upgraded networks to accommodate the demands of their new Long Term Evolution technology, which delivers the fastest mobile broadband speeds on the market.

Equipment purchases intended to raise the capacity of networks, like replacing routers and updating network software to improve the efficiency of networks, are typically among the most lucrative types of sales for Ericsson.

“You have a new technology push, a rollout of a lot of coverage, you start upgrading and then you begin putting capacity in the networks,” Mr. Vestberg said.

“In the way we are approaching this mobile broadband technology right now, it will have a major impact on our society. And it is definitely being driven by data and networks.”

Weighing on Ericsson’s results was a one-time charge in the quarter of 1.4 billion kronor to eliminate jobs for 919 employees in Sweden, or about 5 percent of its domestic work force of roughly 17,200, and the costs of reducing staffing at its global network management business. Its global work force was about 110,000 at the end of last year.

In Latin America, Ericsson’s sales fell 9 percent, to 4.4 billion kronor, in the quarter as operators postponed building new networks amid delays in auctions of radio-frequency spectrum.

AT&T Revenue, Subscriber Growth Miss Wall Street View

The No. 2 U.S. mobile service provider said it had 151,000 net new subscribers in the quarter, compared with the average expectation for 358,000, according to five analysts contacted by Reuters.

Its bigger rival, Verizon Wireless, added 1.5 million subscribers in the quarter.

AT&T said a shortage of the latest iPhone, which went on sale in the last week of the quarter, meant that the vast majority of third-quarter iPhone sales went to existing customers, stunting its growth of new customers.

Slow customer growth likely helped the company post better-than-expected earnings for the quarter as new customers come with a hefty cost for wireless service providers.

AT&T's profit rose to $3.64 billion, or 63 cents per share, from $3.62 billion, or 61 cents per share, and was 3 cents ahead of Wall Street expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

However, revenue fell to $31.46 billion from $31.48 billion and missed the analysts' average estimate of $31.59 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The company also raised its target for 2012 free cash flow by $2 billion to $18 billion.

Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Google Continues Growth in Second Quarter

Advertising, Google’s main business, does not always make as much money on phones as it does on computers, and the price that advertisers pay for clicks on Google ads has decreased 16 percent since last year. And Motorola Mobility, the mobile device maker that Google now owns, is losing money.

Still, Google continues to chug along in its vast search advertising business and make headway in newer businesses like display advertising. Its core business, not including Motorola, had net revenue of $8.36 billion, less than the $8.41 billion that analysts had expected but up 21 percent over last year. Google did not break out net income for the two businesses, but for the combined company it climbed 11 percent. Google shares were up 2 percent in after-hours trading.

Google’s blossoming mobile strategy makes it even harder to differentiate among the big technology companies. Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon each have mobile devices, apps and cloud storage. And it is in those areas that the tech giants are competing.

In June, Google introduced the Nexus 7, a sleek seven-inch tablet to compete with the iPad, the Kindle and the Surface. It also showed the Nexus Q, for home entertainment; Internet-connected Google Glasses; and a new version of its Android mobile operating system, Jelly Bean.

The idea is to offer mobile devices so more people use Google services everywhere they go, instead of devices and services from competitors.

“All of the combatants in the intergalactic race for supremacy appear to be launching consumer products and hardware,” said Jordan Rohan, an Internet analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “Google’s management team realizes that if consumers lock into the Apple ecosystem, it’s going to be hard to sell them Android devices in the future.”

But while Google is meeting people on the devices they want to use, analysts are closely watching whether it can make as much money on mobile devices as it has on desktop computers.

People have long described the price difference between print and Web ads as moving from analog dollars to digital dimes. Cellphone ads could be described as trading those dimes for mobile pennies. Clicks on mobile ads cost about 40 percent of the price of desktop ads, according to Stifel Nicolaus. That is because there is more inventory with the addition of mobile ads, and that could keep some Google users from seeing ads on computers. In addition, people are less likely to make purchases on their phones.

“The reality is when your click prices are going down, it means that advertisers are paying less for your inventory,” said Colin W. Gillis, a technology analyst at BGC Financial.

Google executives said the decline in ad prices was mostly because of foreign exchange rates, that the mobile ad business was healthy and that mobile searches were not cannibalizing desktop searches.

“We believe that mobile searches are mostly incremental,” said Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president for advertising. “For example, on weekends when users are out and about we see a rise in mobile activity and when users come back on Monday we see a rise on desktop.”

Google dominates mobile advertising with 95 percent market share for search ads and 52 percent market share for all types of mobile ads, according to eMarketer. The number of paid clicks on Google ads increased 42 percent over last year.

In a statement, Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, called it a “strong quarter” with “a bunch of exciting new products” and said that with the acquisition of Motorola, “we’re excited about the potential to build great devices for users.”

Mr. Page did not speak to analysts on the earnings conference call, however, because of an ailment that has left him unable to speak for weeks. Though analysts said his health is an ongoing risk, Google executives declined to offer details.

“Larry has lost his voice, and we said that means he cannot do any public speaking engagements at the time, including today’s earnings call,” said Nikesh Arora, Google’s chief business officer. “But he’s here and continues to run the company and is involved in any strategic decisions we’re making.”

Google reported second-quarter revenue of $12.21 billion, up 35 percent from $9.03 billion in the year-ago quarter. Net revenue, which excludes payments to ad partners, was $9.61 billion, up from $6.92 billion. Net income rose to $2.79 billion, or $8.42 a share, from $2.51 billion, or $7.68. Excluding the cost of stock options, Google’s second-quarter profit was $10.12 a share, compared with $8.74 last year.

Analysts scrambled to make sense of Google’s earnings report because for the first time it included Motorola, but not full quarterly results for the device maker because the acquisition closed May 22. Motorola lost $233 million on $1.25 billion in revenue during that period — results that analysts called “frightening.”

Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, asked investors to give Google time to do its homework on Motorola. The addition of Motorola’s 20,293 employees nearly doubled Google’s head count.

Verizon’s Profit Climbs as Subscriber Growth Slows

Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest cellphone carrier, is not gaining as many new contract subscribers as it once was. But its profit remains strong thanks to swelling revenue from mobile data — the fees it collects for Internet use — and healthy smartphone sales.

Verizon Communications, the parent company of the wireless business, reported Thursday that its profit in the second quarter rose 13.4 percent to $1.8 billion, or 64 cents a share, from a year ago.

The company said revenue climbed 3.7 percent to $28.6 billion.

The profit was in line with analysts’ expectations, according to a survey by FactSet.

The company’s overall profit, which includes pretax operating income for Vodafone, which owns 45 percent of Verizon’s wireless unit, was $4.3 billion, a 19.3 percent increase.

Verizon, which is based in New York, said smartphone sales and revenue from its cellphone subscribers helped its results.

“Verizon Wireless has once again demonstrated its industry leadership, combining strong revenue growth with record margins and high customer loyalty,” Lowell McAdam, Verizon’s chief executive, said in a statement.

In the quarter, Verizon Wireless added 888,000 contract subscribers, the most valuable type of customer for the company, down from 1.26 million a year ago. But total revenue from mobile data was $6.9 billion, up 18.5 percent from a year ago.

Those results perpetuate an industrywide trend: contract subscriber growth is slowing because most people who want cellphones have them. So now the carriers are improving profits by using different pricing structures for mobile data, or by attracting one another’s customers with new smartphones and faster data networks.

Verizon sold 5.9 million smartphones in the quarter, including 2.9 million Droid handsets and 2.7 million iPhones. Typically, iPhone sales slow in summer because many consumers expect Apple to introduce an upgraded version in the fall. Nonetheless, Apple’s handset aided Verizon’s growth: A quarter of the people buying iPhones were new to Verizon. Over all, 73 percent of Verizon’s phone sales to subscribers were smartphones.

Verizon is leading the race in the United States to build faster fourth-generation networks, using a technology known as Long Term Evolution. It has LTE deployed in 337 cities, compared with AT&T, which has installed it in 47 cities.

In late June, Verizon introduced “shared data” plans, which allow customers to pay for a pool of wireless data and share it across multiple smartphones, tablets and laptops, a first for the American wireless industry. For new Verizon customers, shared plans and prepaid plans will be the only options. The older tiered data plan is no longer available to new customers.

The shared plans took effect too late to influence Verizon’s earnings, but some analysts said imposing shared plans on new subscribers was a bold move. The plans offer value to high-income families that already spend a lot for data, text and phone services, but not to people who are light users and are trying to save money.

Fran Shammo, Verizon’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call that the company did not expect shared data plans to have an immediate impact. But he said that the new pricing structure was already prying some customers away from their older unlimited data plans, which will help the company make more money over time.

“The benefit we do see is that we are seeing some 3G unlimited customers move into our 4G shared data plan product,” Mr. Shammo said. “That is excellent for us.”

Following Verizon, AT&T introduced its shared data plans on Wednesday with nearly identical pricing.

Tero Kuittinen, an independent mobile analyst and vice president of Alekstra, a company that provides services to help consumers reduce their cellphone bills, said that the shared data plans were a sign that Verizon and AT&T had grown confident that they would not lose subscribers to smaller rivals, no matter how expensive their plans become.

“This is what happens in a duopoly,” Mr. Kuittinen said in an interview. “One company raises prices, and the other does the same thing. It looks like AT&T and Verizon have both concluded that they’re not serious competitors.”

Shares of Verizon Communications declined $1.35, or 2.9 percent, on Thursday to close at $44.54

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 19, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the company that is a part-owner of Verizon Wireless. It is Vodafone, not Vodaphone. 

Google Continues Growth in Second Quarter

Advertising, Google’s main business, does not always make as much money on phones as it does on computers, and the price that advertisers pay for clicks on Google ads has decreased 16 percent since last year. And Motorola Mobility, the mobile device maker that Google now owns, is losing money.

Still, Google continues to chug along in its vast search advertising business and make headway in newer businesses like display advertising. Its core business, not including Motorola, had net revenue of $8.36 billion, less than the $8.41 billion that analysts had expected but up 21 percent over last year. Google did not break out net income for the two businesses, but for the combined company it climbed 11 percent. Google shares were up 2 percent in after-hours trading.

Google’s blossoming mobile strategy makes it even harder to differentiate among the big technology companies. Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon each have mobile devices, apps and cloud storage. And it is in those areas that the tech giants are competing.

In June, Google introduced the Nexus 7, a sleek seven-inch tablet to compete with the iPad, the Kindle and the Surface. It also showed the Nexus Q, for home entertainment; Internet-connected Google Glasses; and a new version of its Android mobile operating system, Jelly Bean.

The idea is to offer mobile devices so more people use Google services everywhere they go, instead of devices and services from competitors.

“All of the combatants in the intergalactic race for supremacy appear to be launching consumer products and hardware,” said Jordan Rohan, an Internet analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “Google’s management team realizes that if consumers lock into the Apple ecosystem, it’s going to be hard to sell them Android devices in the future.”

But while Google is meeting people on the devices they want to use, analysts are closely watching whether it can make as much money on mobile devices as it has on desktop computers.

People have long described the price difference between print and Web ads as moving from analog dollars to digital dimes. Cellphone ads could be described as trading those dimes for mobile pennies. Clicks on mobile ads cost about 40 percent of the price of desktop ads, according to Stifel Nicolaus. That is because there is more inventory with the addition of mobile ads, and that could keep some Google users from seeing ads on computers. In addition, people are less likely to make purchases on their phones.

“The reality is when your click prices are going down, it means that advertisers are paying less for your inventory,” said Colin W. Gillis, a technology analyst at BGC Financial.

Google executives said the decline in ad prices was mostly because of foreign exchange rates, that the mobile ad business was healthy and that mobile searches were not cannibalizing desktop searches.

“We believe that mobile searches are mostly incremental,” said Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president for advertising. “For example, on weekends when users are out and about we see a rise in mobile activity and when users come back on Monday we see a rise on desktop.”

Google dominates mobile advertising with 95 percent market share for search ads and 52 percent market share for all types of mobile ads, according to eMarketer. The number of paid clicks on Google ads increased 42 percent over last year.

In a statement, Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, called it a “strong quarter” with “a bunch of exciting new products” and said that with the acquisition of Motorola, “we’re excited about the potential to build great devices for users.”

Mr. Page did not speak to analysts on the earnings conference call, however, because of an ailment that has left him unable to speak for weeks. Though analysts said his health is an ongoing risk, Google executives declined to offer details.

“Larry has lost his voice, and we said that means he cannot do any public speaking engagements at the time, including today’s earnings call,” said Nikesh Arora, Google’s chief business officer. “But he’s here and continues to run the company and is involved in any strategic decisions we’re making.”

Google reported second-quarter revenue of $12.21 billion, up 35 percent from $9.03 billion in the year-ago quarter. Net revenue, which excludes payments to ad partners, was $9.61 billion, up from $6.92 billion. Net income rose to $2.79 billion, or $8.42 a share, from $2.51 billion, or $7.68. Excluding the cost of stock options, Google’s second-quarter profit was $10.12 a share, compared with $8.74 last year.

Analysts scrambled to make sense of Google’s earnings report because for the first time it included Motorola, but not full quarterly results for the device maker because the acquisition closed May 22. Motorola lost $233 million on $1.25 billion in revenue during that period — results that analysts called “frightening.”

Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, asked investors to give Google time to do its homework on Motorola. The addition of Motorola’s 20,293 employees nearly doubled Google’s head count.

Intel’s Net Income Rises, but Company Warns of Slower Growth

Intel on Tuesday lowered its outlook for the second half of the year based on poor retail demand for personal computers powered by the company’s chips and slower growth in emerging markets.

There were some bright spots in Intel’s earnings report for the second quarter; demand from corporations for PCs and laptops was good, and net income rose slightly, the company said, beating analysts’ expectations.

Paul Otellini, Intel’s chief executive, told analysts in a conference call after the quarterly earnings were announced that revenue would be in the “3 to 5 percent range, versus high single digits” of earlier projections. As a result, Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., plans to slow hiring for the remainder of the year. At the end of June Intel had about 103,000 employees worldwide.

The rise of alternatives like tablet computers and smartphones has also eroded demand for personal computers. Mr. Otellini expressed optimism that sales of ultrabooks, a kind of lightweight laptop computer that Intel has invested in to compete with the new devices, would eventually revive growth.

“We’ll see $699 systems” for ultrabooks in the fall, Mr. Otellini said. “In a softer selling season these devices become even more attractive.” While just a few kinds of ultrabooks have appeared in the last few months, Mr. Otellini said there were “over 140 designs in the pipeline” for later this year.

Over 40 of these designs, he said, will have touch-sensitive screens similar to Apple’s iPad and iPhone, or the Surface tablet recently announced by Microsoft. Intel would also get a boost from the release of the new Windows 8 operating system by Microsoft, he said.

Intel reported that its net income in the quarter ending in June rose to $2.8 billion, or 54 cents a share, from this time last year. Revenue climbed 5 percent, to $13.5 billion. The company appeared to have sacrificed some of its gross profit margin for the higher revenue, however. Gross margins were at 63.4 percent, compared with 64 percent a year earlier.

Wall Street analysts have been lowering their outlook for semiconductor demand. Analysts had expected 52 cents a share and revenue of $13.56 billion, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters.

“What’s saving them is lowered expectations,” said Douglas Freedman, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “They are performing on their business better than expected, but it is a mixed bag on growth.”

Intel’s performance was significantly better than that of its chief competitor, Advanced Micro Devices. This month AMD warned that its second-quarter revenue would decline about 11 percent from the preceding quarter, instead of the 3 percent growth it had earlier projected. AMD said its results, which will be announced Thursday, had been affected by lower sales of consumer devices and slower economic growth in Europe and China.

Intel is also a major supplier of chips for computer servers, which are increasingly used in cloud-based data systems. Intel said its data center sales grew 15 percent from a year ago, to $2.8 billion. Sales to PC makers rose just 3 percent over the quarter, to $8.7 billion.

Unlike many tech companies, Intel continues to invest heavily in research and development. Intel previously said it would spend $18.3 billion in R&D this year, up from a little over $16 billion in 2011, but Stacy J. Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer, said that because of the lowered outlook, the company was cutting this year’s R&D to $18.2 billion.