BlackBerry Reports Quarterly Loss

BlackBerry, which has struggled to claw back market share from the likes of Apple Inc's iPhone, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy phones and other devices powered by Google Inc's Android operating system, reported a loss in the fiscal first quarter ended June 1, and sales of its make-or-break new line of devices were softer than expected.

The company also said it will not make an operating profit in the current quarter.

Shares of BlackBerry, which changed its name from Research in Motion, closed 27.8 percent lower at $10.46 on the Nasdaq on Friday. The stock touched levels last seen in November 2012, before the early 2013 launch of the new range of smartphones.

Some analysts believe that potential buyers may take a look at BlackBerry, given assets that include a wealth of valuable patents, as well as hardware and service businesses.

"If you look at the asset base that they have at their disposal, it's formidable," said John Jackson, research vice president for IDC, in response to a question on Reuters Television. "So there are any number of companies that might have an interest in RIM's assets if indeed it's in play."

Macquarie analyst Kevin Smithen cut his rating on BlackBerry to "underperform" from "neutral" and said he sees a breakup or sale of the company as a likely end game.

BlackBerry invented the concept of on-the-go email more than a decade ago with clunky little devices with a mini keyboard. The gadgets, which offered powerful security features, allowed the company to corner the lucrative market serving business and legal professionals as well as government workers.

But many in that market are now moving to other devices, leaving BlackBerry struggling to make its mark both at the top and the bottom of a competitive smartphone market.

STAYING THE COURSE

BlackBerry said it shipped 6.8 million smartphones in the quarter, including about 2.7 million BB10 devices. This fell shy of market expectations of more than 3 million shipments for its new Z10 and Q10 smartphones. The first-quarter results and revenue figures also missed analyst estimates.

By comparison, Apple shipped 37.4 million iPhones in the March quarter, up from 35.1 million a year ago.

Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said it would take "at least a few quarters" to turn BlackBerry around and he insisted the company would stay the course.

"We're not sitting here devastated or destroyed," Heins told Reuters in an interview after the results came out. "In my view, given where we are with the portfolio and the roll-out, it actually was a good quarter."

On the bright side, BlackBerry's cash position rose to $3.1 billion as of June 1, up about $200 million from the final quarter of the last fiscal year. The company has no debt.

Excluding one-time items, Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry reported a loss from continuing operations of $67 million, or 13 cents a share, on revenue of $3.1 billion. The company said Venezuelan foreign exchange regulations had knocked some 10 cents a share off the bottom line.

Analysts, on average, had expected a profit of 6 cents a share, on revenue of $3.36 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The net loss was $84 million, or 16 cents a share in the quarter, down from $518 million, or 99 cents a share a year ago.

But BlackBerry also reported a steep decline in revenue from its high-margin service business, the fees BlackBerry collects for providing data and security services to customers. Those fees had been expected to fall. But the Venezuelan curbs meant that the decline was steeper than forecast, BlackBerry said.

MURKY OUTLOOK

BlackBerry launched two new BB10 smartphones this year, the touch screen Z10 device and then the Q10, which includes the mini keyboard many BlackBerry users still covet, as well as a less expensive Q5 keyboard device targeted at emerging markets.

But the Z10 only hit store shelves in the crucial U.S. market in late March, while the Q10 device reached the United States only after the quarter had ended.

BlackBerry said it plans to unveil one more lower-priced phone running on its old BlackBerry 7 platform later this year, as it tries to keep market share in price-sensitive emerging markets that are flooded with cheap Android devices.

BlackBerry did not provide a detailed outlook for the rest of the year, saying the smartphone market remained highly competitive, making it difficult to estimate units, revenue and levels of profitability.

Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um, who cut his rating on the stock to "market perform" from "outperform," said the latest results show that the transformation will take some time.

"Our downgrade does not necessarily reflect a view that BlackBerry will not be able to succeed, but rather, that success may be further out than we would like and that the benefits may be costly upfront as the company invests heavily."

(Editing by Janet Guttsman, Frank McGurty and Matthew Lewis)

G.E. Posts 16% Rise in Quarterly Profit

G.E., the nation’s largest industrial corporation, reported net income of $3.53 billion, or 34 cents a share, a 16 percent increase from $3.03 billion, or 29 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.

On an operating basis, income was $4.13 billion, or 39 cents a share. Excluding gains from the sale of its remaining stake in the media company NBCUniversal to Comcast, G.E. posted a 13 percent increase in operating income, to $3.6 billion, or 35 cents a share. That figure matched the average estimate of securities analysts, as compiled by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue in the first quarter was $35 billion, flat compared with figures in the period a year earlier. Over all, G.E.’s revenue came in ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of $34.5 billion. But that total included proceeds from the NBCUniversal sale and slightly higher revenue this year from G.E.’s big finance division, GE Capital.

Revenue from the industrial business, whose products range from jet engines to medical imaging equipment, declined 6 percent, to $22.67 billion.

The drop in industrial sales disappointed investors. Shares of G.E. fell 4 percent, or 92 cents a share, to $21.75.

The shortfall in industrial revenue was attributed to the company’s power and water unit, mainly from lower sales of generators for electrical power plants and wind turbines. As investment subsidies are phased out, wind turbine sales have fallen.

With sluggish growth in the United States and Europe in worse shape, the demand for electrical power is down, meaning fewer power generators sold, upgraded and serviced.

The power and water unit’s revenue fell 26 percent from a year ago, to $4.8 billion, or $1.7 billion less than in the year-ago quarter. Without the power and water unit, G.E.’s industrial business would have grown slightly.

“This is a power and water story,” Keith S. Sherin, G.E.’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts.

Still, G.E. managed to pull out a steady financial performance, helped by higher profits in its aviation and transportation units and by GE Capital.

Weak industrial demand, analysts say, will be a challenge in the first half of this year for the big companies in the sector, including Siemens, Honeywell and United Technologies. Yet because of the falloff in its big power-generation business, G.E. is being hit particularly hard.

“G.E.’s industrial business is slowing even more than expected,” said Steven Winoker, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

In a morning conference call, Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.’s chief executive, called the quarterly performance “mixed.” The first half of 2013, Mr. Immelt said, was expected to be the most challenging, with demand likely to pick up in the second half.

Industrial orders were strong in some businesses, with orders for oil and gas equipment up 24 percent and aviation orders — mainly jet engines — up 47 percent.

The backlog of industrial orders rose to $216 billion, the highest level in the company’s history. The rising industrial orders signal stronger sales in the future, Mr. Immelt said, helping to “position us well for the second half.”

But Europe, where industrial revenue fell 17 percent, may continue to be a drag on the industrial business. “Europe was tougher than we expected,” Mr. Immelt said, adding later, “We’re not counting on things getting better.”

To maintain profits in spite of the weakness in industrial sales, G.E. plans to cut costs by $1 billion this year. And the company, Mr. Immelt said, remained committed to spending $18 billion during the year on dividend payments and to buy back its own shares.

BlackBerry Logs Quarterly Profit, 2013 Loss

The financial report provided a mix of positive and worrying news, leaving some analysts without a clear picture of the once powerful, but now struggling, company’s long-term future.

“It is encouraging that they’ve stabilized the company and they’re not bleeding to death,” said Edward Snyder, an analyst with Charter Equity Research. “But they still have a long ways to go.”

The annual loss, which was reduced from an operating loss of $1.2 billion because of tax benefits, compared with net earnings of $1.16 billion a year earlier.

In the latest quarter, the fourth of the 2013 fiscal year, which ended March 2, the company lost $18 million from operations. But the recovery of income taxes transformed that into a profit of $98 million, or 19 cents a share.

BlackBerry has struggled with declining sales, and that trend continued. Revenue in the latest quarter was $2.67 billion, compared with $2.72 billion in the same period a year ago. Annual revenue fell to $11 billion, from $18.4 billion a year earlier.

For about one month of the quarter, the first of the company’s new phones, the BlackBerry Z10, was on sale in Canada, Britain and some other markets, but not the United States. BlackBerry said that it shipped about a million of the handsets during that time, which was in line with several analysts’ estimates.

“It has not been easy, but the BlackBerry team is delivering,” Thorsten Heins, the chief executive, told analysts in a conference call.

In contrast with many new handsets from other companies, however, the BlackBerry Z10 has been far from a sellout.

Mr. Heins said that since its introduction, only about two-thirds to three-quarters of the touch-screen-based Z10s that were shipped were ultimately sold at retail.

Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee, said the sales data suggested that “The BlackBerry Z10 is not firing on all cylinders.”

He said the slower sales may have been a result of current BlackBerry owners awaiting the release in April of the Q10, another high-end phone with a touch screen and a physical keyboard — the keyboard long being a hallmark of the brand.

Mr. Heins said that another new phone using the BlackBerry 10 operating system, with a lower price than the Z10 and Q10, would be released this year. For AT&T subscribers in the United States, the Z10 costs $200 with a two-year contract or $550 without a contract.

BlackBerry reported having 76 million subscribers worldwide at the end of the period, a loss of about three million. Until the third quarter of the fiscal year, BlackBerry had consistently gained subscribers.

In an unanticipated move, the company also announced that Mike Lazaridis, one of its co-founders, would retire and cut all formal ties to BlackBerry in May.

In an interview, Mr. Lazaridis said that the company’s directors initially opposed his proposal in January 2012 that he and Jim Balsillie step down as co-chairmen and co-chief executives in favor of Mr. Heins as the top executive. The two men were widely criticized at the time for not responding more rapidly to competition from Apple’s iPhone and phones using Google’s Android operating system.

Mr. Lazaridis said he agreed to remain vice chairman until the introduction of BlackBerry 10. Mr. Lazaridis said that in the last year, he guided BlackBerry on the product introduction, and helped Mr. Heins with longer-term plans.

“Having fulfilled the commitment I made, it’s time to move onto my next adventure,” Mr. Lazaridis said. Last week, he announced plans to start an investment fund focused on companies working on computers based on principles from quantum physics.

Mr. Heins said that he expected BlackBerry, formerly Research in Motion, to break even in the current quarter despite doubling its spending on marketing to promote the Z10.

AT&T became the first American carrier to offer the new phone last week. But visits to several wireless stores on Wednesday found striking differences in sales support for the product that BlackBerry, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, hopes will revive its diminished fortunes.

At several locations, including an AT&T store on Fifth Avenue in New York and another near Union Square in San Francisco, the Z10 was lumped in with other phones, some two years old, while signs and promotional material were absent. But at an AT&T store in New York’s busy Union Square, the Z10 was heavily promoted. A salesman who identified himself as a BlackBerry specialist gave a thorough demonstration of the device, including its ability to switch between corporate and personal apps.

The unevenness of presentation was also apparent at T-Mobile USA stores, which this week began selling the Z10, as well as the Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S 4, for $100 down and 24 monthly payments of $20. Verizon Wireless, which has a long association with BlackBerry, began selling the Z10 on Thursday and prominently featured the device on its home page.

Brian X. Chen contributed reporting from New York and Quentin Hardy from San Francisco.

ZTE Reports First Quarterly Loss

HONG KONG — ZTE, one of the world’s biggest mobile phone and telecommunications equipment manufacturers, reported Thursday a net loss of 1.95 billion renminbi for July to September, its first quarterly loss.

The company, based in Shenzhen, China, and led by Shi Lirong, had warned this month that its quarterly loss could be as much as 2 billion renminbi, or $320 million: eight times the size of its profit in the first half of the year. The warning brought a 16 percent drop in its stock price Oct. 15, a series of broker downgrades and warnings from the Fitch ratings agency.

The slide — compared with a profit of 299 million renminbi a year ago — was the result of fierce competition, revenue accounting changes, delayed orders in Africa and chasing market share in Europe through low-margin contracts.

But the weak quarter could be a turning point, analysts say, as ZTE should benefit from China Mobile’s expected spending next year to develop its 4G network.

“The worst should be over, but the recovery will depend on how the global economy goes, too,” said Victor Yip, an analyst at UOB Kay Hian.

On a conference call after the Oct. 14 profit warning, ZTE executives said third-quarter gross margins had fallen as much as 13 percentage points from the level of a year earlier. Analysts said that would bring margins to a record low of little more than 18 percent.

In the first half, ZTE’s gross profit margins had already slipped 2.45 percentage points to less than 27 percent, with margins of its telecommunications equipment business almost double the 16.6 percent margin of its consumer devices division, which makes mobile phones, tablet PCs and the security devices known as dongles.

“We’re always concerned about ZTE’s gross margins,” said Jones Ku, an analyst at Barclays. “The smartphones margin is probably in the low teens, even lower than in feature phones.”

Alcatel-Lucent to Cut 5,000 Jobs After Quarterly Loss

The company, created in the 2006 merger of Alcatel of France and Lucent Technologies of the United States, announced the job cuts as it reported a 254 million euro, or $312 million, loss for the second quarter.

Its sales fell 7.1 percent from the period a year ago, to 3.55 billion euros.

Ben Verwaayen, Alcatel-Lucent’s chief executive, described the cuts as necessary because of weaker demand for network equipment and rising competition from lower-cost rivals. The cuts, Mr. Verwaayen said, would be made by the end of 2013 in all parts of the company except research and development.

“It is clear from the deteriorating macro environment and the competitive pricing environment in certain regions challenging profitability that we must embark on a more aggressive transformation,” he said.

Martin Nilsson, an analyst at Handelsbanken, a bank in Stockholm, said Alcatel-Lucent was feeling the effects of declining demand in North America, its biggest market, for network gear that runs on the code division multiple access, or C.D.M.A., standard, which is being phased out by Verizon Wireless, the market leader in the United States.

Alcatel-Lucent’s revenue from North America, which accounted for 39 percent of its sales, fell 8.3 percent in the quarter, to 1.4 billion euros.

“The whole sector has been weak, but Alcatel-Lucent has the most vulnerable position,” Mr. Nilsson said. “The C.D.M.A. business is disappearing and the company in wireless equipment doesn’t really have much of a major presence outside the U.S. market.”

Mr. Verwaayen said the job cuts were part of a plan to prepare the company for slower growth in markets worldwide, which has pushed some of the company’s competitors, like Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson, to cut jobs or report losses.

In a conference call with analysts, Mr. Verwaayen said he would review all facets of Alcatel-Lucent’s operations with an eye to abandoning unprofitable geographic markets and product and service lines.

In managed services, an outsourcing business in which Alcatel-Lucent runs part or all of the grids for network operators, Alcatel-Lucent will look to renegotiate or cancel about a quarter of its contracts around the world, he added.

While the company declined to specify where the jobs would be cut, Mr. Verwaayen said the reductions would fall across the global organization of 76,000 workers, even in France, its home base, where the Socialist government is trying to prevent further job losses.

“We have a pretty good track record of being stubborn and going through the process in every single jurisdiction that we’re in,” Mr. Verwaayen said. “We will have this program signed, sealed and delivered by the end of 2013.”

Shares of Alcatel-Lucent closed down 6 percent in Paris.

To increase revenue, Mr. Verwaayen said Alcatel-Lucent would create a separate business division to manage the company’s 44,000 telecommunications patents, of which 29,000 were developed at Lucent’s Bell Labs.

The company posted 140 million euros in licensing revenue in 2011 from the portfolio, which the chief financial officer, Paul Tufano, described as “weak” compared with its rivals.

I.B.M. Delivers Solid Quarterly Profit

I.B.M. delivered solid quarterly profits on Wednesday that easily surpassed Wall Street’s expectations, even though it reported weak revenue, which was pulled down by economic troubles in some markets, lower hardware sales and the impact of a strengthening dollar.

I.B.M. was sufficiently encouraged by the results to slightly lift its guidance for the full year to “at least $15.10 a share,” from $15 a share previously.

The quarterly result, said A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, pointed to “fortress I.B.M.,” a company whose profit performance seems all but impervious to industry cycles.

The company, Mr. Sacconaghi noted, has raised its full-year guidance in 12 of the last 14 quarters and met or beat Wall Street’s average earnings estimate for 29 consecutive quarters. “It’s boringly predictable,” he said. I.B.M. is the largest global supplier of information technology — hardware, software and services — to corporations and governments.

In a statement, Virginia Rometty, I.B.M.’s chief executive, said the strong profit performance reflected the success of the company’s “long-term business model.” That model combines focusing on higher-margin businesses and faster-growing markets abroad with aggressive cost-cutting. The strategy has served the company well, with earnings improving steadily throughout the recession and financial crisis.

But the second-quarter report was also the fourth straight quarter that I.B.M’s revenue has fallen below Wall Street’s estimates. “But revenue growth is the missing piece of the puzzle in the long term,” said Steven Milunovich, an analyst at UBS.

In after-hours trading, IBM shares rose $3.40 a share, nearly 2 percent, to $191.65 a share. In the regular session, the company’s stock price closed up $4.60 a share, at $188.25 a share.

The company reported a 6 percent increase in second-quarter net income to $3.9 billion. Its operating earnings per share rose 14 percent to $3.51, partly reflecting fewer shares because of buyback programs. The company has spent about $17 billion buying its own shares in the last year, Mark Loughridge, a chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts.

The profits per share were well above the average estimate of Wall Street analysts of $3.42, as compiled by Thomson Reuters.

I.B.M. reported revenue of $25.8 billion, down 3 percent from the year-ago quarter. That was about $500 million below analysts’ consensus estimate of $26.3 billion. Most of the company’s sales are overseas, so a stronger dollar cut revenue by about $1 billion in the quarter, Mr. Loughridge said.

Revenue was depressed by lower hardware sales, down 9 percent from the previous year when a new model of mainframe computers were selling briskly.

The slowing global economy has hurt other technology suppliers. Several companies have recently alerted investors to weaker-than-expected profits including Advanced Micro Devices, a chip maker; Seagate Technology, a disk drive manufacturer; and Infosys, an Indian supplier of outsourced services and software development.

The companies have cited a pullback in technology spending caused by a struggling American economy, Europe’s financial troubles and a slowdown in China.

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, reported profit that outpaced Wall Street estimates, but sharply lowered its 2012 projections for sales growth.

I.B.M. has so far managed to avoid the cyclical swings in the technology business by winning business in fast-growing foreign markets like China, India and Brazil, and shifting more of its business to higher-profit software and services businesses. Those high-margin ventures typically build on the company’s investment in research and development.

I.B.M. has projects around the world to help cities and nations use computing and data-tracking to improve traffic management, energy use and policing.

Revenue from such projects — I.B.M.’s Smarter Planet initiative — increased more than 20 percent in the quarter.

Revenue from I.B.M.’s big services businesses fell slightly to $14.7 billion, but profit margins and income rose sharply. “We manage these businesses for profit and cash generation,” Mr. Loughridge said.

I.B.M. Delivers Solid Quarterly Profit

I.B.M. delivered solid quarterly profits on Wednesday that easily surpassed Wall Street’s expectations, even though it reported weak revenue, which was pulled down by economic troubles in some markets, lower hardware sales and the impact of a strengthening dollar.

I.B.M. was sufficiently encouraged by the results to slightly lift its guidance for the full year to “at least $15.10 a share,” from $15 a share previously.

The quarterly result, said A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, pointed to “fortress I.B.M.,” a company whose profit performance seems all but impervious to industry cycles.

The company, Mr. Sacconaghi noted, has raised its full-year guidance in 12 of the last 14 quarters and met or beat Wall Street’s average earnings estimate for 29 consecutive quarters. “It’s boringly predictable,” he said. I.B.M. is the largest global supplier of information technology — hardware, software and services — to corporations and governments.

In a statement, Virginia Rometty, I.B.M.’s chief executive, said the strong profit performance reflected the success of the company’s “long-term business model.” That model combines focusing on higher-margin businesses and faster-growing markets abroad with aggressive cost-cutting. The strategy has served the company well, with earnings improving steadily throughout the recession and financial crisis.

But the second-quarter report was also the fourth straight quarter that I.B.M’s revenue has fallen below Wall Street’s estimates. “But revenue growth is the missing piece of the puzzle in the long term,” said Steven Milunovich, an analyst at UBS.

In after-hours trading, IBM shares rose $3.40 a share, nearly 2 percent, to $191.65 a share. In the regular session, the company’s stock price closed up $4.60 a share, at $188.25 a share.

The company reported a 6 percent increase in second-quarter net income to $3.9 billion. Its operating earnings per share rose 14 percent to $3.51, partly reflecting fewer shares because of buyback programs. The company has spent about $17 billion buying its own shares in the last year, Mark Loughridge, a chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts.

The profits per share were well above the average estimate of Wall Street analysts of $3.42, as compiled by Thomson Reuters.

I.B.M. reported revenue of $25.8 billion, down 3 percent from the year-ago quarter. That was about $500 million below analysts’ consensus estimate of $26.3 billion. Most of the company’s sales are overseas, so a stronger dollar cut revenue by about $1 billion in the quarter, Mr. Loughridge said.

Revenue was depressed by lower hardware sales, down 9 percent from the previous year when a new model of mainframe computers were selling briskly.

The slowing global economy has hurt other technology suppliers. Several companies have recently alerted investors to weaker-than-expected profits including Advanced Micro Devices, a chip maker; Seagate Technology, a disk drive manufacturer; and Infosys, an Indian supplier of outsourced services and software development.

The companies have cited a pullback in technology spending caused by a struggling American economy, Europe’s financial troubles and a slowdown in China.

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, reported profit that outpaced Wall Street estimates, but sharply lowered its 2012 projections for sales growth.

I.B.M. has so far managed to avoid the cyclical swings in the technology business by winning business in fast-growing foreign markets like China, India and Brazil, and shifting more of its business to higher-profit software and services businesses. Those high-margin ventures typically build on the company’s investment in research and development.

I.B.M. has projects around the world to help cities and nations use computing and data-tracking to improve traffic management, energy use and policing.

Revenue from such projects — I.B.M.’s Smarter Planet initiative — increased more than 20 percent in the quarter.

Revenue from I.B.M.’s big services businesses fell slightly to $14.7 billion, but profit margins and income rose sharply. “We manage these businesses for profit and cash generation,” Mr. Loughridge said.

Yahoo Quarterly Results Show Challenge Mayer Faces

Revenue and net income were stalled at last year’s levels. Although Yahoo has amassed an enormous audience, some advertisers are looking elsewhere.

But on Tuesday, for the first time in a long time, people took an interest in Yahoo. The day before, Ms. Mayer left a senior post at Google to lead the company that Google had left in its wake.

Analysts and shareholders — desperate for signs of life from the moribund company — are eager to see whether Ms. Mayer, 37, can lure back advertisers, reinvigorate a muddled brand and improve morale at a company marred by executive churn, constant cost-cutting initiatives and mass layoffs.

“Bringing in Marissa Mayer gets people’s attention,” said David Hallerman, a principal analyst at eMarketer. “The sheer attention that they are getting because of hiring her will be helpful for a while. But it will only carry them so far,” he warned.

The first problem she faces is Yahoo’s identity crisis.

Previous chief executives — and there have been four of them in the last five years, plus two interim chiefs — have had a difficult time trying to define what Yahoo actually does. Most people cannot explain the company in a single simple sentence. “The age-old question with Yahoo has been: Is it technology first or is it media or content first?” said David Cohen, the chief media officer at Universal McCann.

Most recently, under Ross Levinsohn, who has been the acting chief since May, Yahoo seemed focused on content. It announced a number of prominent deals with ABC News, including a new weekly Web video show starring Katie Couric called “Katie’s Take.” During a presentation made to a room full of advertisers in April in Manhattan, Mr. Levinsohn highlighted Yahoo’s own coverage of sports, finance, the presidential campaign and the coming Summer Olympics.

With 700 million users, Yahoo still draws one of the largest audiences on the Web. More people use Yahoo’s e-mail service than any other service. Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance and Flickr, the photo site, are the most popular destinations in their categories.

But over the last few years advertising technology has grown more sophisticated and advertisers themselves have come under financial pressures, prompting many of them to buy ads more cheaply and more quickly through ad networks and auction-based sales. Yahoo’s advertisers are now experimenting with new platforms, most notably Facebook.

To challenge Google’s ad dominance, Yahoo formed a partnership with Microsoft and AOL last year on a deal to sell advertising for one another. And in January, Yahoo bought the online advertising company Interclick, which allows marketers to tailor ads to specific demographics.

The two moves led to the creation of Genome, Yahoo’s new digital advertising product, which offers advertisers data about their users and crunches that data so marketers can create custom ad campaigns. But Yahoo’s revenue from online display ads rose just 2 percent in the second quarter compared with a year ago, and it continues to lose market share.

The choice of Ms. Mayer, who oversaw some of Google’s most successful products — the search engine business, Gmail and Google Maps among them — suggests that Yahoo may turn its focus to new products, like mobile technologies. “Yahoo has a very healthy search advertising and display advertising business,” Ms. Mayer said in an interview on Monday. “I’m interested in what Yahoo can do with video and mobile, both of which are very promising.”

Brian Wieser, a senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, said advertisers had grown largely indifferent toward Yahoo. “What would get them more money is if they have a sexier brand,” he said. That’s where Ms. Mayer’s Google sheen could help the company. “We don’t know that she’s not the next Steve Jobs,” Mr. Wieser said.

Ms. Mayer may have the hardest time taking Yahoo into the mobile advertising arena, a market dominated by her former employer. Unlike Yahoo, Google and Apple dominate the mobile advertising space with hardware and software options.

And that’s where it runs headlong into its identity problem. “Yahoo is still mainly a media company. It doesn’t have an operating system. It doesn’t have the devices,” Mr. Hallerman, of eMarketer, said. “I don’t know if there’s room in the market for a fourth mobile platform.”

Asked whether she plans to run Yahoo as a media company or a technology company, Ms. Mayer said, “It’s not the right question. The most important thing is to give end users something valuable, inspiring and delightful that makes them want to come to Yahoo every day.”

Ms. Mayer skipped Yahoo’s earnings call Tuesday. Thanks to cost-cutting initiatives and restructuring, Yahoo’s second-quarter earnings beat analysts’ expectations, but revenue was flat at $1.22 billion. The company reported Tuesday that net income in the second quarter fell 4.2 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, to $228.5 million, or 18 cents a share.

Nicole Perlroth reported from San Francisco and Tanzina Vega from New York.