Wall Street Beat: Tech Earnings Season Could Be Stormy - knightknou1962

Get ready for a perfect storm of earnings news program. With technical school bellwethers including IBM, Microsoft, Intel and Google fructify to issue financial reports next week, lucre season will pick off up in earnest and judgment from recent forecasts and profit warnings, it could be a rocky ride.

Both IDC and Gartner this week according that ordinal-fourth PC sales slipped from a year earlier. Though the software sector is widely expected to do better than ironware this year, a weak PC market affects non only chip makers corresponding Intel, but software makers whose revenue depends to some degree on sales of applications on new PCs.

"Spell social science uncertainty in Northwestern European Community had an effect on consumer PC shipments, expectations of a healthier economic outlook in North America could not stimulate consumer PC demand in this neighborhood," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal psychoanalyst at Gartner , in the accompany's report card happening quarterly Microcomputer gross revenue Thursday. "The healthy professional PC market as well as growth in emerging markets could non compensate for the weaknesses in mature markets, with overall growth quieten dissident."

Worldwide PC shipments destroyed 92.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 1.4 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Gartner.

On its part, IDC Wednesday also said that sales of individual computers slowed in the last trine months of 2011, due to a weak economy, insufficient hard drives as a results of flooding in Thailand and the competition from tablets. According to IDC's calculations, global PC shipments totaled 92.7 jillio in the fourth quarter of 2011, down 0.1 percent compared with the same fourth part in 2010.

Intel in part blasted supply disruptions from the flooding in Thailand when IT issued an earnings warning last calendar month. The troupe forecast fourth-quarter sales of US$13.7 one million million, asset or minus $300 million. Its previous estimate was for $14.7 billion, within a range of $500 jillio.

But earnings warnings birth non been the sole province of hardware and components makers lately. Juniper bush Networks, for example, said Monday that its fourth quarter 2011 results bequeath be softer than foreseen ascribable a moderating in demand for carrier routers. Juniper said revenue for the quarter is now potential to constitute in the range of $1.11 billion to $1.12 billion, compared to the company's old forecast of $1.16 billion to $1.22 billion.

Philips Electronics also warned about puny fourth-quarter win, in its case due to indulgent European consumer markets. The company, Europe's biggest consumer electronics Godhead, same earnings will decrease to nigh €500 million (US$638 million) from €910 million a year originally.

"Our expected fourth-fourth financial results have been affected away the helplessness in EU, which has compact our health care business, besides American Samoa pricing in our consumer lighting business," said CEO Frans van Houten.

Slowing demand in Europe was likewise responsible for the cut in revenue growth forecasts from Indian outsourcing giant Infosys. On Th, Infosys said receipts growth for the year would be 16.4 percent, down from the 17.1 percent to 19.1 percent it had projected in October.

While economic indicators in the U.S. come along to be looking up, the outlook for Europe, plagued past a crowned head debt crisis, is still dim, said Ashok Vemuri, member of the plug-in and direct of Americas at Infosys.

Contempt the glumness that appears to represent settling in, there were any bright spots this week.

Happening Fri, for example, Run down issued preliminary fourth-quarter results, reportage revenue would rise 11 pct to €4.5 billion. Results will make up aided by a break in money set aside to deal with a lawsuit Oracle filed against Run down and its former subsidiary TomorrowNow. The judge in the incase overturned the $1.3 billion jury award to Seer, giving Oracle the choice of accepting $272 zillion or undergoing a new trial.

But growth is mainly coming from Tire's essence applications patronage and momentum for analytics and mobile applications, the company same.

Software is likely to be the engine of growth for the global IT manufacture this year. Software, accounting for about 25 percent of total Information technology spending, is the largest class of spending, according to Forrester.

Nevertheless 2012 will get along to beryllium a comparatively down year for IT, accordant to analysts. Forrester projects a slowdown in the global IT market growth, from 9.6 percent in 2011 to 5.4 percent, totaling $2.1 trillion in 2012.

Still, that's promising to cost more than doubly the U.S. GDP (coarse husbandly product) growth this year. Soh while IT spending slows, the tech sphere is still likely to be a beacon of light in a troubled world economy.

Market news Fri sunrise appeared to cost a sort of microcosm of what economy watchers might expect concluded the next calendar month or so. All prima indexes were down after earnings fell at JPMorgan Chase, the U.S.'s largest bank. In addition, reports swirled that Standard & Poor's would downgrade ratings on several governments in the Euro zone because of problems created by high borrowing costs.

Through Th, the Nasdaq computing device index was risen 4.43 percent since the first trading day of the twelvemonth. But the gloomy sentiment on the markets did not spare the tech sector Frdiay morning. The Nasdaq computer companies were down by 0.88 percent as of late morning trading.