Nokia says it will cut 1000 jobs soon after a huge drop of 69% in its profits for the fourth quarter. This drop has been prompted by a drop in demand for its handsets and its cost cutting measures seem necessary for the company to remain strong financially.

The news for this year doesn’t look and brighter with sales of mobile phones expected to drop even more. The net profit for the last quarter was $749 million which was well below expectations ( $1.3 Billion ).There has also been a drop in the company’s market share.

This year is going to be very challenging for the company though they seem determined to come out with a stronger list of products.

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In today’s economy where almost every company has taken a beating in profits and revenues Google seems to be chugging ahead rather strongly.

Let’s just take a quick look at the numbers:

• For the quarter the company reported a net income of around $382 million
• For the same quarter last year the company reported a net income of around $1.21 billion. Now this is seen as a huge drop in revenue.

This drop in revenue can be attributed  to two non-cash charges writing down the value of its investments in AOL and Clearwire at $726 million and $355 million respectively.  Which means, if you put all this together Google’s revenue for the quarter is at a staggering $1.62 billion!!

How on earth did they manage to pull this off when everyone else seems to be losing money?

Well, a lot more people performed Google searches and Google showed search ads more often.  The company has invested a lot to ensure its search engine remains competitive, with over 250 improvements made to it in the last year alone.  They have also started using universal searches ( a blend of all aspects of content ) to give the user a larger variety of results and we can be sure of further improvements in the days ahead.

Another aspect high on their priority list is balancing between the quality of ads opposed to the quantity. High quality ads show less number of times thereby impacting revenue though initial indications show that they are tackling this issue rather well and already have a comfortable lead in the coverage department.

Google has also become very careful with which initiatives they are willing to support. The aim here is to maintain a very tight control over costs. The worry here is that Google might not expand as aggressively as it seemed to be before.

Another move that will affect their balance sheets is an exchange program that will allow employees to exchange their worthless “underwater” stocks with ones based on Google’s current price. This will set the company back $490 million to get this done.

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According to the Washington Post, the incoming U.S. presidential administration has started facing issues with the existing IT infrastructure of the White House. President Obama’s staff who are used to Macs and social media are having huge issues dealing with Windows PC’s and “antiquated” software. Given that a lot of effort was invested in using the latest technology to aid the campaign its understandable the team is frustrated with what they have been given now, not to mention dealing with a lot of content and website filtering which means they can’t use social networking sites.

Of course there is a reason why things are the way they are. The White House needs to keep track of every bit of information going out and coming in due to security reasons. However I’m sure the wheels have been set in motion to help this transition happen at the IT department. Atleast the president managed to hold on to his Blackberry!!

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Microsoft reported an 11 percent drop in net income for its fiscal second quarter compared to the year-earlier period. Revenue was up two percent to $16.63 billion, but profit was $4.17 billion, or 47 cents a share, versus $4.71 billion and 50 cents a year earlier.

Microsoft’s net income dropped 11 %  for this quarter compared to the same period last year thought revenue was up  a bit.  The economic slow down has impacted its windows division resulting in a considerable loss in revenue. In an attempt to tackle this problem the company has decided to cut close to 5000 jobs and freeze pay hikes during the course of this year. With negative results showing for almost every company in this sector this move is not surprising but one does wonder how long this will continue and what more these companies will do to stay afloat and competitive in the long run.

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Intel is another company that has decided to restructure its older manufacturing operations in an attempt to reduce the impact on its newer manufacturing centers.

In total the company plans to shut down 4 of its manufacturing units : one in the Philippines, two in Malaysia and one in Hillsboro . This move will affect close to 6000 employees at the company over the course of this year. This move is not shocking as their results have been very disappointing and cutting jobs seems to be the only way to survive through this economic slowdown.

Layoff’s seem to be the order of the day as almost every company seems to be letting go of large volumes of their employees. It seems this downturn has affected virtually every company out there.

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Sony is expected to post a record annual loss of close to $ 3 billion primarily due to the rapidly deteriorating global economy. In a move to address this issue it plans major restructuring  that will include factory closures and layoff’s in large numbers. The company projects an operating loss of 260 billion yen, about $2.9 billion, for the current business year, compared with a profit of 475.3 billion yen a year earlier.

Sony has taken a massive hit across all its major lines of business from games to movies. Pressure from competitors and reduced demand for its products due to the consumer credit crisis hasn’t helped either.

“The massive economic upheaval being experienced across the world is sparing no one in the consumer electronics world,” the Sony chief executive, Howard Stringer, said at a Tokyo news conference.

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In a bid to stay competitive Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) cut prices on its processors as a result of Intel announcing price cuts. It has also sold its Handel business to Qualcomm for $65 million. The reason? They have a serious cash crunch and this move will help inject vitally needed liquidity into their business. This sale is supposed to be part of large operation  to streamline the company. This is a huge step forward for Qualcomm as they get into the hand held business on a strong foot. As part of this deal the design and development teams have also been retained.  Qualcomm said the acquisition bolsters its multimedia capabilities and sets the stage for delivery of more advanced products that redefine next-generation mobile user experiences.

“With the sale of these handheld technology assets and resources to Qualcomm, we are better able to focus on our core business and leverage our unique position as a leader in both x86 computing and high-end graphics,” said Robert Rivet, chief operations and administrative officer and CFO of AMD. “We believe the talented AMD Handheld employees will be a great asset to Qualcomm.”

This acquisition opens up new avenues of growth for the company. While the smartphone market does tie in with Qualcomm’s core competencies the sale of the shader architecture would allow the company to start developing performance products for the mobile industry.

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Google’s efforts to expand its advertising empire beyond the confines of the Internet have hit their first major setback.

For the past two years Google has been selling ads in newspapers in an attempt to create a new revenue stream for newspapers and allow more relevant ads to be featured. However over time they’ve realized that they hadn’t been able to create the impact they had hoped for.

Google Print Ads, as its called, hoped to sell ads through auctions to various newspapers. However it ended up being used only to sell small ads spaces that the newspapers themselves could not sell. Which meant the money coming in to Google was so small it didn’t seem viable in the long run.

On the whole this is the first failed attempt at Google trying to break into the traditional advertising space with an aim to bring some sort of an efficiency to the advertising bid process.

It will be interesting to see how the radio and television advertising initiative continues given the setbacks of the newspaper ads.

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