Shares in Google have dropped 5% despite the technology giant reporting a first-quarter profit rise of 3%.<\/p>\n
Profits were $3.45bn (\u00a32.05bn), but investors are preoccupied by Google’s inability to maintain advertising prices.<\/p>\n
A widely watched measure, the average “cost per click”, was down 9% from a year earlier.<\/p>\n
Another weak spot highlighted in the report was the firm’s discounted sale of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo.<\/p>\n
Google sold the smartphone maker to Lenovo in January for close to $3bn, after paying $12.5bn for the firm less than two years ago.<\/p>\n
Despite investors’ reaction, Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, was upbeat: “We completed another great quarter,” he said\u00a0in a statement.<\/a><\/p>\n “We got lots of product improvements done, especially on mobile. I’m also excited with progress on our emerging businesses.”<\/p>\n However, Google continues to struggle with its ability to charge advertisers higher prices for mobile ads, which are increasingly important with more and more consumers accessing Google’s browser through their smartphones.<\/p>\n Advertisers have proven reluctant to pay as much for ads on mobile screens compared to Google’s bread-and-butter desktop ads, which have been the main revenue generator at the firm.<\/p>\n Rates for mobile ads can be half as much as on personal computers, according to Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.<\/p>\n However, Google expects mobile ad prices to catch up with PCs eventually as it becomes easier for consumers to buy products using mobile devices, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora said.<\/p>\n ‘A little bit dodgy’<\/strong><\/p>\n Google has greatly diversified its portfolio of products in recent years, speculatively branching out into\u00a0phones<\/a>,\u00a0drones<\/a>,\u00a0Google Glass<\/a>, and even\u00a0thermostats<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0fire alarms<\/a>, CNet technology analyst Larry Magid said.<\/p>\n “Some of these crazy ideas need to become less crazy and more profitable,” he told the BBC. “Their core business, what really brings in the money, that’s beginning to get a little bit dodgy for them.”<\/p>\n Google’s results were not the only ones to disappoint investors on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Technology giant IBM reported its lowest quarterly revenue in five years.<\/p>\n IBM attributed the drop in revenue, which went down 4% to $22.5bn, to weak hardware sales.<\/p>\n Enterprise technology spending has shifted away from traditional computing giants as governments and corporations move towards online services, large-scale data analysis and IT security, FBR analyst Dan Ives said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shares in Google have dropped 5% despite the technology giant reporting a first-quarter profit rise of 3%. Profits were $3.45bn (\u00a32.05bn), but investors are preoccupied by Google’s inability to maintain advertising prices. A widely watched measure, the average “cost per click”, was down 9% from a year earlier. Another weak spot highlighted in the report […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-14079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-akwasi-osei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}