Also, people buying TVs before the Super Bowl helped the company in the fourth quarter this year, compared with the first quarter last year.
But the group's global sales are still down about 4% so far this year compared with the first seven months of last year, though that is much better than the average for the industry.
The company reported its youth-oriented brand, Hi, saw an 8% decline in outgoing SMS or text messages per customer in the first three months of this year compared with the first quarter of 2010.
Only eight financial-crisis cases were filed this year, compared with 38 in the first half of last year.
Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest maker of PCs, saw a 24% fall in shipments in the first quarter compared with the same period a year ago.
But 13% of patients on the high-dose group discontinued because of side effects during the first year, compared with 9% in the lower-dose group and 7.2% on placebo.
Its orders were down by 24% during the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2011.
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Toyota's total North American car sales rose 5.8% to 3.2 trillion yen in the first half, compared with the same period a year earlier.
According to official figures, Hong Kong's economy contracted by 2.8% in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year.
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Although the volume of exports increased, its export earnings fell by 5% in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year.
Overall, revenues are down 35%, compared with the first nine months of last year.
World steel output was 8.5% higher in the first eight months of this year compared with the same period last year.
Global equity capital markets volume fell 20% through the first six months of the year compared with last year, and global debt volume fell 30%, according to Dealogic.
But as a result of the new free-trade agreement, imports from the U.S. were up 13% in the first five months of this year compared with the same period in 2001.
But Benjamin Swinburne, a media analyst at Morgan Stanley, is forecasting a surprisingly strong rebound in advertising, especially on television, because dealers' spending on car and truck ads has fallen implausibly low: down by 65% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with the same period last year.
After reporting a profit increase of 70% in 1999, the group posted another rise of 52% in the first quarter of 2000, compared with the same period last year.
Hiroshi Saito, a tourism-promotion official in Ishikawa, said his prefecture saw a 45% increase in the number of foreign visitors to its famous Kenrokuen garden for the first three months of this year, compared with the same period a year earlier.
According to Mr Taylor, on average funds were up around 2-3% in the first half of this year, compared with around 10% at the same point in 1997.
Spending on advertising in the U.S. grew 5.1% in the first quarter months of 2010, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the media tracking firm.
China's main securities regulator had granted 28 new QFII licenses in the first four months of this year, compared with a total of 29 for the whole of last year.
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Net income slid 43% in 1999 and 72% in 2000's first half, compared with the year-ago period.
By flying higher and lighter, they can last seven years, compared with five years for Iridium (with the first year al-ready gone).
Alliance's share price also increased in the first few weeks of the new year by 16% compared with the FTSE All-Share which is up 10%.
One reason for this is a better outlook for the Japanese economy, which grew in the first half of this year by more than 3% compared with the previous six months.
Overall, American, Canadian, and European cities that have implemented smoking bans had an average of 17 percent fewer heart attacks in the first year, compared with communities who had not taken such measures.
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This reflects the growing number of 3D offerings: seven in the first six months, compared with five last year.
The UK was performing well compared with the US, where CD sales were down 20% in the first three months of the year, he added.
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When the first six months of the Hamilton experiment are compared with the same winter months of the previous year, crime levels actually went up slightly.
The airport recorded a total of about 140, 000 passengers in the first three months of 2012 - compared with almost 214, 000 for the same period last year.
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In the first half of this year, investment has grown by nearly 24% compared with the same period last year, with half of the money going into high-tech industries.
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