UPDATED 13:37 EDT / OCTOBER 19 2012

Google Q3 Snafu Shines Light on Troubled Mobile Business

On Thursday, Google’s stocks declined by 9 percent when their printer, RR Donnelley, published their third quarter financial report four hours earlier than scheduled.  The Q3 report stated that Google’s profit was at $2.18 billion, down from last year’s $2.73 billion.

“Earlier this morning RR Donnelley, the financial printer, informed us that they had filed our draft 8K earnings statement without authorization,” Google said in a statement after the untimely release.  “We have ceased trading on NASDAQ while we work to finalize the document. Once it’s finalized we will release our earnings, resume trading on NASDAQ and hold our earnings call as normal at 1:30 PM PT.”

The printing firm is already investigating the incident.  This is the exact reason why companies hold their earnings call and publish their financial reports hours after trading closes.

It looks like investors focused on the profit decline instead of looking at the big picture.  It was also included in the report that they showed a revenue of $666 million, up from the  $385 million during the same period last year.  According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, the increase in revenue is attributed to the stellar sales of the Google Nexus 7 tablet.  If Munster is correct, it would mean that Google sold over 10,000 Nexus 7 tablets every day on average since it was launched.

But investors are also worried about Google’s mobile efforts, as they seem to be losing revenue.  The industry is shifting focus and more people are using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets rather than personal computers for their daily use.  Google generates the majority of their income from ads on websites but ads on mobile platforms aren’t as profitable.  But analysts aren’t losing hope for the search giant stating that time is in their favor especially with Google’s focus on search and advertising.

“The shift toward mobile search — or rather the new reality of ubiquitous devices and seamless screens as portrayed by Google — is likely to remain choppy in the near term based on the still early stages of mobile advertising and mobile search behavior,” J.P.Morgan tech analyst Doug Anmuth said.

“However, we continue to believe Google is well positioned to benefit in a mobile world as search easily ports over to mobile devices for users, mobile search volume becomes more incremental, and mobile CPCs increase over time.”


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