Microsoft announced a seven per cent fall in its quarterly profits, as its performance was hurt by losses at its new Nokia handset division.

The company said that profits fell to US$4.6 billion, from US$4.97 billion a year, ago, thanks largely to a US$692 million loss at Nokia handsets.

Last week the company announced 12,500 job cuts at the Nokia division, as well as 5,500 redundancies across the rest of the company as it starts to tie the handsets division into the rest of the company’s services.

The company has around 127,000 employees.

Revenues for the quarter came in at US$23.4 billion, compared to US$19.9 billion a year ago. The Nokia business contributed US$1.99 billion to current year revenue.

Microsoft sold 5.8 million Lumia smartphones, and 30.3 million non-Lumia phones following the completion of the Nokia acquisition. Low price point devices drove a majority of the Lumia smartphone volumes, while non-Lumia phone volumes were simply said to have "performed in line with the market for this category of devices".

Apple posted a 12 per cent rise in its second quarter profits as iPhone sales offset declines in sales of its iPad tablet.

The company said that it sold 35.2 million iPhones during the three months to the end of June, an increase of 13 per cent from the same time in 2013. It was particularly boosted by sales in China, but also Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa.

However, sales of the iPad tablet continued to decline, down by nine per cent to 13.3 million as that product was hurt by increased competition from both Android tablets, but also Amazon’s own range of tablets that are tied to its book store.

Revenue rose six per cent to US$37.4 billion, while net profit was up by 12 per cent to US$7.75 billion.

Nawras today reported that total revenues for second quarter amounted to OMR55.5 million (US$144 million), up 10.6 per cent year-on-year. EBITDA for the quarter came in at OMR30.1, up 27.5 per cent, while net profit was up 32 per cent year-on-year to OMR9.9 million.

For the first half of 2014 revenues increased by 10 per cent to OMR108.2 million, driven by increases in both fixed and mobile data revenues as well as voice revenue offset by a decrease in SMS revenue.

EBITDA for H114 stood at OMR56.7 million, up 22 per cent year-on-year.

Net profit for the period amounted to OMR 18.7 million, up 23 per cent year-on-year, driven by higher EBITDA partially offset by a higher depreciation cost due to network modernisation.

Nawras’ total number of customers grew by 7.7 per cent in the half, to 2.47 million, with fixed line customers growing by nearly 13.4 per cent year0n-year to 64,192 customers, and mobile post-paid customers growing by 2.6 per cent to number 190, 531 customers. Mobile prepaid customer numbers grew by eight per cent to 2.22 million as of June 30.

Mobily has posted a six per cent increase in its H1 revenues as it announced the interim financial results for the period ending on June 30, 2014.

Revenues for the first six months totalled SAR12.227 billion (US$3.26 billion), while gross profit for the second quarter amounted to SAR3.088 billion, up four per cent.

Q214 gross profit margin increased to 52 per cent from 50 per cent a year earlier, and was a result of Mobily’s improved revenue mix.

Q214 EBITDA margin stood at 35 per cent, down from 39 per cent a year earlier, and 36 per cent in Q114.

Net profit in Q214 came in at SAR1.312 billion, down 19 per cent year-on-year, and six per cent quarter-on-quarter. The reduction in net profit was attributed to writing off SAR338.7 million of net profit for Q214 that had been recognised in net profit in Q1.

Data revenues totalled 39 per cent of overall revenue for the first six months, up from 27 per cent a year earlier.

Vodafone Qatar reported that revenue in Q214 to June 30 amounted to QR 585 million (US$161 million), with EBITDA amounting to QAR159 million, up 61 per cent year-on-year. ARPU for the period stood at QAR131, up 6.5 per cent year-on-year, with net loss being reduced to QAR27 million, an improvement of 68 per cent over the same quarter in 2013.

The cellco counted 1.354 million subscribers at the end of the period, up 18 per cent year-on-year