For the six fiscal months ended September 30th, 2010, Nintendo saw its first semi-annual loss in seven years, thanks mostly to a steep decline in DS handheld sales.
Year-over-year, DS sales (which include DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL) dropped to 6.69 million worldwide, from 11.7 million in the same period last year.
The drop in sales makes sense though, given that the market has been very close to saturation for some time. Additionally, the Nintendo 3DS is set for launch early next year, so consumers appear to be bidding their time and waiting on the new, updated handheld.
Helping contribute to Nintendo’s falling bottom line was Wii sales, which fell from 5.75 million to 4.97 million in the same time periods.
With falling console sales came falling software sales, as well.
The Yen has made significant gains against the US Dollar in the past two years, leaving Nintendo’s net income down 34 percent.
Result for: decline
Amazon has bid 199 million pounds for the large European movie-rental company Lovefilm, says The Sunday Times, although both companies have declined comment.
The world’s largest e-tailer already owns a 42 percent stake of the rental company.
In 2008, Amazon merged its European rental operation with Lovefilm’s, while at the same time buying the stake of one of the company’s venture capitalists.
Earlier this year, Lovefilm announced it was ramping up its digital movie services, making deals with Sony and Samsung for on-demand streaming.
Every few months, Amazon is rumored to be purchasing Neflix, the largest rental company in the United States.
Result for: decline
After falling to third place last year behind perennial leader HP and Acer, iSuppli has reported this week that Dell has retaken second place in the PC manufacturing market.
Overall, PC shipments increased this quarter to 82 million, with Dell taking a 12.8 percent share, just beating out Acer at 12.4 percent.
HP remained the leader at 18 percent.
Despite a decent jump in overall sales, all three of the top manufacturers saw a sales decline. Lenovo, on the other hand, saw an 18.6 percent jump in sales, good enough to take 10.1 percent of the market.
Acer and HP saw the largest declines, with sales falling 6.2 and 6.3 percent, respectively, from the quarter preceding this one.
HP has spent the last sixteen quarters in first place.
Graph via iSuppli:
