A look at how selected companies providing computers, components, services and related software are faring:
April 11: Research groups Gartner and IDC estimate that PC shipments in the first quarter were ahead of their expectations, though growth was modest in light of competition from smartphones and tablet computers. Hewlett-Packard Co. appeared to have regained some of the business it had lost as it was weighing whether to dump its PC business. Lenovo Group Ltd. showed strong gains over last year. Dell Inc.’s market share fell as it focused on higher-end, higher-profit machines.
Tuesday: IBM Corp. reports flat revenue, falling short of analysts’ expectations. Software and services revenue grew, but IBM’s hardware and financing segments saw a decline.
Intel Corp. reports first-quarter results that were held back by a shortage of hard drives, which meant that PC makers had to curb production and needed fewer Intel chips. The scarcity was caused by flooding of hard-drive factories in Thailand last year. The company says hard-drive supplies improved during the quarter and the shortage is now over.
Seagate Technology PLC reports that its earnings in the latest quarter surged and revenue almost doubled. CEO Steve Luczo says the company benefited from a general recovery in the market for hard drives. But Seagate says it also shifted its product line to “industry-leading products’’ across all of its markets.
Coming up:
Wednesday: Qualcomm Inc.
Thursday: Microsoft Corp., EMC Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., SanDisk Corp., Altera Corp.
April 23: Texas Instruments Inc., Xerox Corp.
April 24: Apple Inc.
April 26: Western Digital Corp.
May 22: Dell Inc.
May 23: Hewlett-Packard Co.
Not yet known: Lenovo Group Ltd., Nvidia Corp., Salesforce.com Inc., Oracle Corp. (June), Micron Technology Inc.
Source; http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-17/business/30290355_1_pc-business-pc-makers-hard-drive
See: Profile
