Motorola has reported a 600 percent increase in profit for the Q2, thanks mainly to its network equipment division and continued strong smartphone sales.
Droid smartphones, including the original Droid and new Droid X, continued strong sales, and both are well received, critically.
Both devices are sold through Verizon Wireless, the U.S.’ largest carrier.
Most of the quarterly profit came from the company’s networks equipment unit, which Motorola plans to sell to Nokia Siemens for $1.2 billion.
Overall earnings came to $162 million, up from $26 million last year.
Motorola shipped 2.7 million smartphones during the quarter with 14 million expected for the full year. Co-CEO Jha says he expects the phone business to be profitable by the fourth quarter, for the first time in four years.
Result for: strong sales
Last October, Western Digital launched the WD TV Live HD media player, and saw strong sales.
Today, WD has introduced that latest version of the box, the WD TV Live Plus, which adds built-in support for Netflix and MediaFly. If you are a Netflix subscriber with a $8.99 or higher monthly package, they can stream over 12,000 “Watch Instantly” movie and TV titles.
MediaFly offers podcasts from CNN, NBC, MTV and ESPN.
Just like with past versions of the box, the Live Plus will allow for playback of mostly all formats of video and music and pictures. Also built-in is support for Internet radio such as Live365 and Pandora. You can connect the player to the Internet via Wi-Fi or ethernet, and even stream content from your computer via DLNA.
HD playback is available up to 1080p.
Twice lists the compatible file formats, and you would be hard pressed to find a file you cannot play via the Live Plus:
Compatible file formats include: AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS and WMV9 video format; and JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP and PNG image formats.
For audio: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital and DTS music formats.
The unit allows users to create playlists such as PLS, M3U and WPL and subtitle format such as SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB and SMI.
The player is available for pre-order with a $150 MSRP.
Result for: strong sales
Harmonix has released the demo for the upcoming Rock Band sequel, Green Day: Rock Band and included is a teaser image that seems to imply that the upcoming game will have keyboard support, an all-new instrument for the popular music game series.
Users can download the two-track demo from the XBL Marketplace and play the songs “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Welcome to Paradise.”
The image shows off the four standard icons, (mic, guitar, bass, drums) with the keyboard fifth.
The original game of the series sold over 5 million tracks, and led to a revolution in DLC (downloadable content), selling over 40 million tracks.
Rock Band 2 continued strong sales for the franchise, although reviews were not as great.
Pic via JoyStiq:
