Earnings: RealNetworks Revenue Up 50 Percent, Mobile Doing Well

Citing strong performance from its digital music subscription business, RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) posted positive 1Q earnings and revenues. Its 1Q net income was up 60 percent, reaching $40 million, or 22 cents per diluted share, compared with $24.88 million, or 14 cents per share, in the previous year. Revenues rose 50 percent to $129.5 million from $86.6 million.

On the wireless side, the technology products and solutions division, or TPS, reported revenue of $44.4 million, representing a 277 percent increase year-on-year — that’s due mainly to the WiderThan acquisition. CEO Robert Glaser said that the integration process has gone very smoothly.

During the quarter Real signed contracts or launched services with six carriers and service providers: Rogers in Canada, Helio in the US, S Telecom in Vietnam, Telecom TV in the UK, TDF in France, and DigiTurk in Turkey. However, most of the growth in subscriber numbers came from existing ASP customers, with Real’s total carrier application service subscribers under management increasing to 21.9 million at the end of the first quarter, up from 20.2 million at the end of Q406. The delivery of inter-carrier messages also increased 20 percent sequentially to 16.5 billion messages.

IP Licensing: Glaser also noted that during Q4 2006 Real’s licensees (Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and QualComm) shipped 23 million handsets preloaded with Helix DNA technology.

Real is looking for more M&A opportunities for its ASP offerings, especially in Europe where WiderThan was weak.

PaidContent has detail on Real Network’s wider operations.

Earnings release | Webcast, Transcript

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