Amazon Misses; Q4 Net I...

Amazon has just released fourth quarter 2011 earnings, missing sales expectations but beating earnings estimates. Net income decreased 58% to $177 million in the fourth quarter, or $0.38 per diluted share, compared with net income of $416 million, or $0.91 per diluted share, in fourth quarter 2010. Net sales increased 35% to $17.43 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $12.95 billion in fourth quarter 2010. Analysts are expecting earnings of $0.17 cents a share on revenue of about $18.3 billion. “We are grateful to the millions of customers who purchased the Kindle Fire and Kindle e-reader devices this holiday season, making Kindle our bestselling product across both the U.S. and Europe,” said Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos. “Our millions of third-party sellers had a tremendous holiday season with 65% unit growth and now represent 36% of total units sold.” Operating income was $260 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $474 million in fourth quarter 2010. Operating cash flow increased 12% to $3.9 billion for 2011 compared with $3.5 billion in 2010. Free cash flow decreased 17% to $2.09 billion in 2011, compared with $2.52 billion in 2010. Full year 2011 sales increased 41% to $48.08 billion, compared with $34.20 billion in 2010. North America sales were $9.9 billion, up 37% from fourth quarter 2010. International sales, representing the company’s U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian and Spanish sites, were $7.53 billion, up 31% from fourth quarter 2010. Worldwide Media sales grew 15% to $6.01 billion. Worldwide Electronics and Other General Merchandise sales grew 48% to $10.91 billion. Amazon says its Appstore for Android customers nearly tripled in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter. In addition, customers downloaded more apps from the Amazon Appstore during the fourth quarter than they had during all previous quarters combined. Amazon also said the number of videos purchased or rented from Amazon Instant Video and the number of Amazon Instant Video customers both more than doubled year-over-year in the fourth quarter. In addition, the number of Prime Instant Video streams increased nearly 300% in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter. All signs point to the Kindle Fire selling very well . One analyst recently updated Q4 Fire sales to six million units from five million. Amazon said that Kindle device sales as a whole tripled over the holidays. Amazon has also been rumored to be taking on Netflix with with a more comprehensive video-streaming product.

Weekend Watch Update

For the third time in a row Tag Heuer has once again released the worlds most precise mechanical chronograph watch. The oddly named Mikrogirder 2000 watch measures time with 5/10,000th of a second precision (and flair). The best German luxury brand A. Lange & Sohne releases a watch that sincere watch connoisseurs will go ga-ga over. It is the new Lange 1 Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar timepiece . California-based Devon previews their upcoming Tread 2 watch . It is a follow-up model to the cool Tread 1 that uses belts to tell the time. A chic geek hit no doubt. Jaeger-LeCoultre offers the Duometre Spherotourbilon with an eye catching tourbillon the seems to gracefully bobble about. The entire package is porn for watch lovers. A full hands-on review of the Linde Werdelin SpidoSpeed Chronograph watch that is the brand’s first ever chronograph. After 40 years the iconic Audemars Piguet Royal Oak watch is still the brand’s best seller. For 2012 the Royal Oak gets refreshed a bit and bumped up in size to 41mm wide. Breitling’s famous Navitimer gets the Photoshop Watch What-If treatment exploring new styles and one that makes it looks basketball themed. 2012 was the year of the big Pilot watch for IWC who makes probably the best high-end classic aviation themed timepieces out there. The new collection of IWC Pilot watches is previewed here before the large industry trade show. Almost exclusively for the icon-centric Chinese market, Piaget makes a range of extremely intricate year of the Dragon themed watches . Learn about these watches an more on the Hourtime Podcast . Click to view slideshow.

Data And Privacy Rears ...

It’s only day one of DLD , the annual TED-like conference in Munich thrown by German media giant Burda, and already we have a few misunderstandings brewing. Amid the furore surrounding the SOPA protests and lobbying form media companies, at the other end of the debate-spectrum, the European Commission, in the shape of EC vice-president Viviane Reding, has been looking at harmonising privacy and personal data in Europe.

With Focus On Internati...

After about a year of being iPhone only, the Airbnb app comes to Android this morning alongside a complete revamp of the Airbnb mobile features. With over 500K downloads and 125k active users on iOS, and over 10% of its traffic coming through mobile, Airbnb mobile web genius Andrew Vilcsak tells me that the move to Android was inevitable, “The biggest complaint was that it wasn’t on Android, which currently holds 48% of the entire world’s market share.” Vilcsak tells me that they made the mobile updates with international expansion in mind; Airbnb currently serves over 19,000 cities in 192 countries and the company expects their usership to double after today’s Android launch. “A host with a mobile app can respond two and a half times faster which means a substantially better guest experience.” The Airbnb app will be available in five different languages (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Danish, Portuguese, Russian) compatible with over 100 Android devices on everything from Android 2.1 to Android 4.0. The jump to Android comes with a refresh of the company’s web app as well, and now both Android and mobile web users can search for listings through their phone, book lodgings the night of, access their itinerary and host details. You can also browse through user profiles, message people through the app, accept and decline reservations, take pics of your property, in addition to keeping track of your guest schedule and setting up custom pricing. Both the mobile web and the Android app will allow offline accessibility, “So even if you’re traveling through the Spanish countryside everything gets saved through your phone,” Vilcsak says. These mobile updates are part of a larger series of product developments, Vilcsak hopes that the company can build out these already existing features and expand into more platforms and device coverage including Nokia phones, “The quicker people can communicate the better,” he says. Airbnb presently has a $120M in funding from Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, YCombinator, Keith Rabois and others. You can find the app in the Android market by searching for “Airbnb.”

Wikipedia Will Go Dark ...

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales wanted to send a “big message” to the U.S. government regarding the two heinous internet censorship bills currently being considered, and after a brief period of debate the world’s encyclopedia will soon do just that. The Wikipedia founder announced on Twitter today that starting at midnight on Wednesday, January 18, the English language version of the world’s encyclopedia will go dark for 24 hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA. With their commitment confirmed, Wikipedia will be joining a slew of websites and companies that will suspend their operations for one day in an effort raise awareness around the two bills. Meant to curb IP theft and piracy, the (imaginatively named) Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act have raised eyebrows recently due to their decidedly scorched-earth approach to handling suspected offenders. Websites found to offer pirated content, along with the services that they use, could be hidden from US internet users by being delisted on search engines and potentially on DNS servers themselves. Rather than let users access Wikipedia’s vast stores of English-language information on the 18th, Wales mentioned that the Wikipedia landing page will instead be populated with a letter of protest and a call to action that urges readers to get involved with the issue. It doesn’t appear as though the new landing page has been finalized, but one of the community’s prototypes can be seen above. The news comes after a lengthy debate as to the particulars of such a grand gesture — whether or not the site should participate at all, which versions of the site would be affected, and how exactly the blackout would go down were all on the table for the community to discuss. Ultimately, the consensus pointed to a full blackout as a the proper way to make their collective displeasure known. There’s no official word on how other parts of the site will handle the event, although Wales has mentioned that the German language version of the site will be displaying a banner in support. Meanwhile, some of SOPA’s supporters are already reacting to the very public backlash against the bill. Ars Technica reports that Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) would be pulling his DNS-blocking provisions from the bill after having consulted with “industry groups across the country.” What’s more, the White House has responded to two petitions about SOPA and PIPA on the official White House blog stating that they will not “support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” Wales notes on Twitter that while SOPA has been “crippled,” buts its counterpart in the Senate is still very much alive and very dangerous. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently popped up on Meet The Press claiming his continued support for PIPA even though it “could create some problems.” Though the event is meant to raise public awareness over two critical pieces of legislation, Wales still took a moment to offer a bit of sage advice for students heading back to school: Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday! #sopa — Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) January 16, 2012