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Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is out with disappointing earnings and the report is going to sour the tone for Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) on Wednesday.  Earnings for the PC maker and services firm came out as $0.43 EPS and that is short of estimates of $0.46 EPS from Thomson Reuters and short of the $0.46 whisper number.  Revenues were also soft at $14.42 billion versus the estimate of $14.91 billion.

The guidance looks pretty bad too.  Dell is targeting growth of only being up 2% to 4% sequentially and that implies revenues of $14.7 billion to $15 billion rather than the $15.42 billion expected. Ouch!

Dell said that Enterprise Solutions and Services revenue grew about 2% year over year to $4.5 billion.  The company further noted that enterprise solutions and services businesses now account for 50 percent of its gross margin.

Large Enterprise revenue was $4.4 billion in the quarter, a drop of 3%; Public revenue was $3.5 billion, a drop of 4%; Small and Medium Business revenue grew 4 percent to $3.5 billion; Consumer revenue was $3 billion, a drop of 12%.

Here is a breakdown by region: Asia-Pacific and Japan revenue was flat but China increased 9%. EMEA revenue was down 1% and Americas was down 7%. Revenue in the BRIC countries increased 4 percent.

Dell ended the quarter with $17.2 billion in cash and investments against a market capitalization rate of $26.5 billion.  Shares closed up 0.7% at $15.08, but the stock is now down almost 8% at $13.75 in the after-hours session.

JON C. OGG