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PC shipments came in 1.4 percent lower in the fourth quarter of 2011 than in 2010 with a total of 92.2 million PC shipments worldwide, Gartner announced today.

The research company said that even though PC market growth is healthy, the fourth quarter had unusually weak holiday demand.

"While economic uncertainty in Western Europe had an effect on consumer PC shipments, expectations of a healthier economic outlook in North America could not stimulate consumer PC demand in that region," said Gartner principal analyst Gartner Mikako Kitagawa in a statement. "The healthy professional PC market as … Read more

Hard disk drive supplier Seagate Technology provided a financial update today, reiterating that demand for HDD units will exceed supply in 2012 in the wake of flooding last year in Thailand.

Seagate updated its financial outlook for fiscal second quarter 2012 on Wednesday afternoon, stating it shipped approximately 47 million disk drives, which included approximately 700,000 Samsung disk drives.

Revenue is expected to be between $3.1 billion and $3.2 billion, the company said. Analysts had projected revenue of $2.79 billion on average, according to Bloomberg. Seagate completed the acquisition of Samsung's hard disk drive business … Read more

A research note from an investment bank today sees an iPhone 5 coming this fall and sees strong growth for Apple's popular phone in the coming quarter.

The iPhone will comprise roughly 50 percent of Apple's total revenue in the next reported quarter, wrote Tavis McCourt of Morgan Keegan.

"We expect iPhone revenues to represent 47.5% of Apple's total revenues in [the December quarter], up from 38.8% in the Sep. quarter, and up from 39.1% in the year ago period," he wrote.

And he is upping his iPhone shipment estimate for the … Read more

While tablet sales are passing Intel by, server sales are not, allowing the chipmaker to keep a healthy chunk of the global processor market.

Intel in the third quarter accounted for 83.7 percent of global microprocessor revenue, up about 3 percentage points from the same quarter last year and widening its lead over Advanced Micro Devices, which lost more than a percentage point, according to IHS iSuppli.

"The boom in media tablet sales has...both upsides and downsides for Intel--hurting its business in netbook microprocessors--but boosting its sales of chips used in data centers to support cloud computing,&… Read more

Research In Motion reported declining profits and revenue in the third quarter as it continues its downward spiral.

For its fiscal third quarter, the Canadian mobile devices maker reported (PDF) a profit of $265 million, or 51 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $911.1 million, or $1.74 a share. Excluding one-time charges, including one taken for its unsold PlayBook tablets, the company earned $667 million, or $1.27 per share.

Revenue was $5.17 billion, a modest decline from RIM's year-earlier revenue of $5.49 billion.

Wall Street analysts, on average, had forecast earnings … Read more

After Hewlett-Packard reported earnings today, CEO Meg Whitman said that the Googles and Facebooks of the world are coming to HP to get servers because of the dearth of hard disk drives.

Whitman was responding to a question from an analyst during today's earnings conference call about companies like Google and Facebook building their own servers and not getting them from the traditional sources--PC makers like HP and Dell.

"We hear all the time that people are building their own servers. There are a few...that are building their own servers," she said.

Whitman continued. "[But] … Read more

The solar industry is in for a dire quarter as falling government subsidies and low volumes further drive down equipment prices at a time when oversupply has already led many sector players to lower their full-year profit outlook.

A pickup in demand for solar panels, widely expected by industry players for the second half, failed to materialize, pushing several U.S. companies, most notably panel maker Solyndra, to file for bankruptcy in recent months.

European players have been cutting their outlooks on falling demand in Germany, among them SMA Solar, the world's No.1 maker of solar inverters and … Read more

AT&T is looking forward to an "unbelievably" happy holiday.

The company expects its best smartphone sales ever in the fourth quarter, according to Ralph de la Vega, head of the consumer and wireless businesses.

"We expect blockbuster smartphone sales in the fourth quarter," de la Vega said today during a conference call following its third-quarter report, further fueling the expectations by saying the results would be "unbelievable."

Smartphone adoption has long been the key to AT&T's ability to keep its revenue growth humming. A customer who signs a two-year … Read more

Better-than-expected phone sales during a difficult transition period helped Nokia report financial results today that surpassed analysts' predictions for the third quarter.

Revenue of 8.98 billion euros, or $12.2 billion, were a bit ahead of analysts' average expectation of $12.16 billion, according to those surveyed by Thomson Reuters. And excluding one-time items, earnings of 4 cents per share were well above the loss of 2 cents expected.

That doesn't mean Nokia, which is partway through moving from its own operating systems to Microsoft's Windows Phone, is laughing all the way to the bank. Its revenue … Read more