With new Android-based devices being released at a genuinely curious pace, some have questioned just what has pushed so many companies into using Android on their various smartphones.

At least the Android logo is a little bit cute

The answer, if you’re to read the report from PaidContent, seems to be that Google could well have bolstered the numbers of Android devices out there by offering some interesting deals to the various manufacturers and carriers involved. According to the report, Google has been offering to share the ad-revenue that it generates from Android-based devices, on condition that the manufacturers and network operators involved include apps for Google’s search service.

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It seems that Facebook is managing to do very well for a site that many had said may never see any real revenue generated. Indeed, signs point to some very big numbers for Facebook.

Facebook never really comments in any detail on its finances...

According to InsideFacebook, the last time Facebook openly discussed its revenues in pretty much any way, shape or form was when it announced in September of last year that it had become “cash-flow positive” which, sadly, doesn’t tell us all that much about it. That didn’t stop speculation though, which pegged it at somewhere around the $550 million mark for the year just gone. Still, if the news from today is anything to go by, Facebook did a little better than that.

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It seems that Palm is lining up for a fairly disappointing conversation with its shareholders, with word that the company’s CEO has warned employees that times things have been rough for Palm.

Palm's Pre has always looked nice, but it seems like that's not quite enough...

Word of the shaky figures comes via a letter sent to Palm employees by company CEO Jon Rubinstein, in which it’s pointed out that the company will be posting revenues for Q3 of somewhere between the $300 million mark and $320 million, which will very likely be something of a disappointment for any Palm investors, who had previously been told to expect somewhere in the realm of $1.6-1.8 billion. Still, Rubinstein was fairly open about the situation, saying that,

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According to its latest figures, Hewlett Packard has managed to best its own estimates for the first quarter of this year, with profits rising an impressive 25%.

Still seems strange to see HP at the top of the heap, fair play

Word comes from Cnet of the announcement, which saw the company manage to achieve a net revenue of $31.2 billion and putting earnings at $2.32 billion. While the increase in revenue amounts to a fairly impressive 8%, the earnings increase manages to swell to a far more noteworth 25%. Certainly, given the current financial climate, HP will be happy to not only have sustained growth, but to have grown profit by such a large magnitude.

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It seems that YouTube’s traffic numbers for music videos might not be quite as accurate as many had hoped, with Warner Music Group pointing to some fairly questionable numbers.

YouTube does have its own music service...

Word comes via Cnet that Warner Music saw a massive spike in the number of unique visitors to its various different YouTube videos between over the course of December and January, with reports indicating that it had managed to more than double its traffic, seeing views around the 47 million mark in a month. Still, all might not be as well as it seems from that description…

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Facebook is rolling out a service that will see users able to reply to comments left on their updates simply by replying to the email notification that they receive informing them that someone has left a comment.

It’s a relatively simple update, and indeed, one that some Facebook users (who had their Facebook’s set to languages they could read) twigged a couple of months back, before Facebook confirmed that it was working on something to allow users to reply directly from their email inboxes. It’s a relatively simple idea, and one that could see Facebook’s comments skyrocket when it comes to those of us who receive mail directly to mobile devices but aren’t bothered opening Facebook apps every few minutes.

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Mozilla might well be in the spotlight at the moment for changes it’s made with the release of Firefox 3.6, but for many the real news will be the fact that the company has managed to see record-breaking success financially over the course of this year.

Mozilla has reported that it’s total revenue for the 2008 financial year tips the scales at the very healthy $78.6 million mark, which isn’t bad at all when you consider the fact that we’re in a recession. Moreover, things are only likely to get better with the recent releases of Firefox, which have dramatically improved the browser’s behaviour and security.

Of course, the vast majority of the money that Firefox makes comes from Google. Earlier in the year I shot a message at some of the major browsers to ask just where the majority of their income came from, and while most weren’t too amenable, the folks at Mozilla and Opera both replied to say something in much the same vein, namely that their money comes from Google.

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Dell has had a fairly rough time this year, with its recent earnings report indicating that the company has seen a relatively small decline in revenue, but a fall in profit by over 50%.

According to Cnet, Dell managed to match industry analysts’ predictions when it came to revenue, reporting $12.9 billion, but the problem is that profit hasn’t been quite as good as revenue, with Dell seeing profit drop by fully 54%, to the tune of 17 cents per share. Dell has placed the blame fairly firmly on the reception of Windows 7, which, while good, didn’t really live up to Dell’s expectations. At a conference, Dell CFO Brian Gladden said of the fall,

“We saw some weakness in orders in some of the weeks preceding Windows 7 … our inventories were in place and people were waiting to see how the launch went. After the launch we saw a surge in orders. We believe that affected our October revenue a bit, but we’ll ship that through in the fourth quarter.”

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Mozilla’s Firfox browser has turned five, and while it took a lot of time and money to get to where it is, the folks at Firefox are starting to bite the hand that fed them… Google.

Mozilla and Google have something of a strange relationship. As we mentioned earlier on in the year when we got a chance to talk to some of the guys from both Mozilla and Opera, most browsers make a significant proportion of their money from that little Google search bar in the top right… Google pays for the traffic sent their way from different browsers, browsers can be offered for free, it’s an ideal arrangement, except Google has had more involvement than that with Firefox.

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Yahoo has announced its results for Q3, which saw net income almost triple to reach the $186 million mark, a figure that might well be a touch misleading.

The BBC is reporting that, despite a 12% drop in revenue to $1.58 billion, Yahoo’s total profit did indeed triple, thanks in no small part to cost cutting measures introduced by CEO, Carol Bartz. It’s well worth noting that Yahoo’s operating expenses were stripped down by $169 million since last year, so the rise in net income to $186 million seems as though it may very well be attributable in large part to those cuts.

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Times have been hard for those invested in the notebook market, and it’s starting to look as though the humble netbook is responsible for the decline in revenue in the notebook space.

Samsung's NC10 is often considered to be the quintessential netbook

The fall in revenue in the portable space is due to a combination of factors, the two most prominent of which being the startling popularity that netbooks have managed to gain, and their lower prices. According to ChannelWeb, the falling price of netbooks means that this could well be the first time year-on-year decline in revenue in the portable space.

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Times are hard for Nokia; while total sales haven’t dropped significantly in the last twelve months, profit has taken a major hit. It’s come out now that the Scandinavian phone company may be looking into the netbook world for more opportunities.

According to The Economic Times, Nokia’s president, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo mentioned the project when asked about the possibility of a netbook while in India. Kallasvuo’s statement opened with “… the PC and the mobile will continue to come closer and merge. A lot of opportunity can be seen in this converged area.” As though that weren’t enough to get people thinking, Kallasvuo went on to state pretty explicitly that Nokia is considering a netbook.

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