The case for the extraordinary value of Apple’s share is straightforward. It had revenue of $46.3 billion in the last quarter, up from $26.7 billion in the same period a year ago. Net income was $13.1 billion, an increase from $6 billion. The strength of those numbers is compounded by their rapid growth rates. Apple probably has passed Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) as the largest tech firm in the world by sales.

There have been other, and probably more remarkable, technologies than Apple’s hardware and software, which make the company’s results less impressive.

The sales of Windows-based PCs, a product which is now viewed as nearly ancient, are still about 400 million a year. It is hard to calculate how many of these have been sold since they were first introduced in 1980. It is probably 6 billion or more. In addition to what companies like Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and HP have made on that business, the Windows revenue of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has to be added. The figure is certainly close to $1 trillion.

The video game console and software-based games also would have to be contenders to the sales of Apple’s products. Sales of the Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation are above $200 million and growing. Add to that the sales of the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Wii. The total of all of these has to be $600 million or more.

Apple’s numbers may be stunning, but they are not as stunning on a second look when compared to other technology products, the success of which are almost forgotten.

Douglas A. McIntyre

For the first quarter 2012, ST-Ericsson expects a very significant sequential decline in net sales, resulting from a combination of higher inventory at some of our customers, further weakening of legacy product sales, the effect of first quarter seasonality as well as the reduction, in the short term, of new product sales with one of our largest customers.

Though unnamed, Nokia is believed to be the customer ST-Ericsson is referring to here.

There is also a belief that Nokia will have to cut its rich 8.6% dividend yield as the company tries to conserve cash for the coming launch of its new smartphones using the Windows Phone 8 operating system from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). Lagging sales of the company’s cheaper feature phones aren’t helping either.

Nokia’s ADRs are down nearly -7.5% today at $5.31 in a 52-week range of $4.46-$11.75.

Paul Ausick

Microsoft’s sales in the past quarter did not improve much — from $20 billion to $20.9 billion. Earnings were down very slightly to $6.6 billion. But the world’s largest software company is nearing the end of its Windows 7 product cycle, and Windows 8 is on the horizon. The strength of its earnings were in its Servers & Tools division and Business division. These signal the health of corporate and enterprise IT spending. Google has tried to enter this field with its apps products and failed. Microsoft’s products have the appeal of completeness and are fully finished. The power of its numbers in these areas was confirmed by IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) strength in the same sector

Google’s earnings were impressive on their face. Sales rose 25% to $10.6 billion. Earnings were up very modestly from $2.54 billion to $2.71 billion. The margins were unimpressive. Wall St. reacted by dropping shares by 10%. The strangest thing about the company’s numbers was that the employee count at Google rose from 31,353 at the end of September to 32,467. This happened as Google dropped out of a number of is faltering businesses. It would seem the size of its workforce ought to decline. Google has decided to invest in a future that may be severely limited.

Google’s figures were hurt by the movement of search to mobile devices from the PC. Yield per click on its text ads dropped 8% from the same period a year ago. Some analysts believe that click activity on mobile devices is poor. Google may be the leader by far in mobile search. The victory appears to have caused damage to its margins.

Google’s other major push into mobile is its Android operating system. Its adoption has been extraordinary. Android growth has outpaced the increase in the use of Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) OS, and Microsoft barely has as foothold in the market. Google has not found a way to make money on Android, and the software is under patent attacks, mostly from Microsoft. An open source operating system that was supposed to be free has turned out to be expensive for its adopters. Most have agreed to pay license fees to Microsoft for its intellectual property. Microsoft may have found the mobile OS business more profitable than Google, even though Windows mobile OS growth has been nonexistent.

Microsoft was mocked for its entry into hardware, mostly through its Xbox franchise. Redmond posted fourth-quarter sales of $4.2 billion for the division. That is up from $3.7 billion the year before. Sales of “entertainment and devices” are now nearly as large as that of Windows. And the division made $528 million. Google has finally seen the strength of hardware. It is set to buy Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI), the wounded handset company. It is not as good a hardware operation as Xbox is, but it allows Google a chance to have some of the success that Microsoft had when it started a gaming and entertainment device business that no one through would succeed. Microsoft also has a strong foothold in the American living room. Google has not yet launched its attempt — Google TV.

Finally, Google said it would press harder into display advertising. Search ads were assumed to be a much better place to make money than display. Display ads have been the foundation of Microsoft’s online business. Suddenly Google finds the sector attractive.

Google has begun to move closer to Microsoft’s business model — a model that most analysts have believed is deeply flawed.

Douglas A. McIntyre

The market for tablets is already mature enough to support substantial sales. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Samsung have proven that. That competition between the two is heated enough for each to spend time in court attempting to block sales of the other country by country.

If any other company is late to the tablet PC market it is Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), which launched its Kindle Fire late last year. Amazon has the advantage of its large content libraries to help buttress sales. Dell will have no such advantage.

Dell also will face other tablet launches in 2012. That will include one by Lenovo. Acer has just entered the market. Hewlett-Packard’s (NYSE: HPQ) first foray was a failure, but that does not mean the firm will not try again.

Companies like Dell get caught flat-footed when a market they should do well in grows rapidly. The excuse is usually the same. It is worth a wait to see how the market will flesh out. It is best to hold off to see which features and operating systems have the most momentum. By the time all of those things are known, it is usually too late. Being first to market a risk, but it is a bigger risk to be last. The tablet market has already shown as much.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Of course, many big public corporations also did very poorly. Several nearly destroyed their business and dragged down shareholder value with it. 24/7 Wall St. combed through the S&P 500 to find the best and worst managed companies in America for 2011.

Read: The Best Run Companies In America
Read: The Worst Run Companies In America 

To make a list of semifinalists, 24/7 Wall St. considered stock price, changes in earnings per share, major shifts in market share and changes in management, among other data. Once the initial screen was complete, we reviewed product launch success, financial results, success of new management and the performance of each company within its industry. The editors then sifted through the finalist to identify those that rewarded both customers and shareholders and those that caused these two groups the most harm.

Neither the best-run companies list nor the worst-run companies list includes a large number of corporations from any single industry. This indicates our methodology identifies well- and worst-managed companies regardless of the industry. Based on our criteria, the management of Starbucks did as good a job as the management of Oracle — two of the best-run companies. Similarly, Eastman Kodak management did as poorly as the management of American Airline parent AMR — two of the worst-run companies.

This is 24/7 Wall St.’s Best and Worst Run Companies of 2011.

The biggest problem with the cable companies’ set top boxes is the nearly impenetrable user interface. The new Xbox Live software completely changes that, replacing the hierarchical menus with a graphical interface that can accept voice, touch, and motion commands as well as commands from a smartphone or other handheld device. The idea is to make the TV interface as intuitive and easy-to-use as a smartphone.

Apple’s latest Apple TV offering lets users stream content from the iPhone to a TV set through its AirPlay feature. Google is working with Samsung Electronics (OTC: SSNLF) to integrate Google TV directly into a TV set. Users will still need a cable TV subscription to gain access to cable programming through the Xbox or other TV device.

One interesting thing about all this is that Microsoft, Apple, and Google are very likely to take over the distribution of content from cable companies like Comcast and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ). Not having to design, build, and market a set top box with a modern interface is not a bad thing for the cable guys, who will still make money by requiring users to pay for the cable subscription. Customers, of course, will very likely have to pay a (modest) fee to Microsoft, Apple, or Google for the privilege of connecting to the TV through another device. Xbox Live, for example, requires a $5/month fee for its premium service which allows users to control the TV.

Another possibility is that the TV control software will be paid for by advertising. Xbox Live does include advertising, and although Google has not revealed what it plans to do with its software, the company could choose to offer the TV software on an ad-supported basis.

A second interesting thing about Microsoft’s announcement is that this is one area in which Microsoft could actually be leading both Apple and Google. The Xbox Live interface is consistent with the Windows Phone 8 interface and will be the same as the user interface on Windows 8 which is due in the second half of next year. Apple was first to integrate handheld smartphones and tablets with a TV, but the Microsoft offering is far more mature than Apple’s offering. Google got sidetracked on a failed try with Logitech International SA (NASDAQ: LOGI), but its TV deal with Samsung could change things around because Samsung also sells more Android-based phones than any other company. Integrating Android with a TV is natural extension, but Google and Samsung are getting a bit of a late start.

The Xbox Live announcement could usher in the next big thing or it could just be another swing and miss at the integration of computing devices and TV sets. This time does look like it will be different.

Paul Ausick

In its new “Global Cloud Index and Methodology: 2010 – 2015,” Cisco points out the obvious. The growth of broadband and the amount of data that has to be moved from point-to-point has exploded, and it will continue to do so. Cisco has advice for how this can be done seamlessly. It comes as no surprise that the solution involves the use of Cisco products.

Cloud computing will be essential to the growth of data storage and traffic. The use of the cloud is already important to companies like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), which has its applications available on its servers so that customers can access their information directly from nearly any point in the world. Consumer applications also have grown as firms such as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) make more of their multimedia products available on the cloud.

Cisco’s conclusion is that much of the internet’s structure and server centers are probably too immature to be ready for the world of IP use in 2015:

In terms of data center and cloud traffic, we are firmly in the zettabyte era. Global datacenter traffic will grow fourfold from 2010 to 2015 and reach 4.8 zettabytes annually by 2015. A subset of data center traffic is cloud traffic, which will grow 12-fold over the forecast period and represent over one-third of all data center traffic by 2015 . A key traffic driver as well as an indicator of the transition to cloud computing is increasing data center virtualization. The growing number of end user devices combined with consumer and business users preference or need to stay connected is creating new network requirements. The evolution of cloud services is driven in large part by users’ expectations to access applications and content anytime, from anywhere, over any network and with any device. Cloud-based data centers can support more virtual machines and workloads per physical server than traditional datacenters. By 2014, more than 50% of all workloads will be processed in the cloud.

From a cloud readiness perspective, the study covers the importance of broadband ubiquity. Based on the regional average download and upload speeds and latencies for business and consumer connections, all regions can support some level of cloud services. However, few regions’ average network characteristics are currently able to support the high-end advanced cloud apps.

Parts of the world will have to make hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in upgrades to operate in the zettabytes world — a world that only a few people can imagine because the hardware and advance software needed will be so complex.

Few people know what a zettabyte is. It is a measure of internet traffic. Cisco is worried that the internet cannot hold the weight of the data rush that is coming. Cisco routers and server products might be the only solution. At least Cisco hopes so.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Tech Data posted third-quarter EPS of $1.26 on revenue of $6.59 billion, compared with consensus estimates for EPS of $1.27 on revenue $6.74 billion. The company also noted that it was “realigning” its resources in Europe and that it expects that to cost it $15 million in the fourth quarter. The company expects “flat to low single-digit sales growth” in both its Americas and Europe segments. No word on profit expectations.

Both Synnex and Arrow have provided brighter outlooks, with Arrow raising its EPS guidance to $1.25-$1.37 for the fourth quarter, solidly above the previous consensus of $1.25. Synnex raised its fourth-quarter EPS guidance above the consensus estimate $1.06 to $1.11-$1.15.

Avnet and Arrow, like Tech Data, missed third-quarter EPS estimates by a penny or two. And with the rather bleak global economics forecasts, especially for Europe, any optimism for better earnings and revenues in wholesale sales seems misplaced. Short-term help could come as a result of recent flooding in Thailand, which will lower the supply of everything from disk drives to chips and raise the prices for these items until full production returns.

Just to offer a glimpse at potential value among the wholesalers, here’s a quick look at potential upside for these five stocks based on share prices collected at mid-morning today.

Tech Data has a median target price of $53.50, and its current share price is $46.13, for a potential gain of about 15.6%. Ingram Micro’s target price is $21.00, and its current price is $17.91, for a potential gain of 17%. Synnex has a median target price of $32.00, and a current price of $28.70, for a potential gain of about 11.5%. Arrow’s median target price is $43.00 and its current price is $34.78, for a potential gain of 23.6%. Avnet’s median target price is $37.00 and its current price is $28.14, for a potential gain of 31.5%.

Every one of these upside numbers is pretty rich, and even if the optimistic earnings forecasts from Synnex and Arrow materialize this quarter, there doesn’t seem to be any reason now to expect that optimism to carry over into 2012. The European economy is about to become a shambles, and the super committee of the US Congress is about to declare failure in reaching an agreement on budget cuts which will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts to the 2013 budget. Spending contraction is not what these companies need.

Tech Data’s shares are off more than -3.7% this morning, at $46.12, in a 52-week range of $38.21-$54.25. The company’s earnings and Avnet’s announced $1 billion credit facility — coupled with an overall 300-point drop in the DJIA this morning — are dragging all these wholesalers down today, by -2.5% to nearly -4%.

Paul Ausick

HP and Intel plan to issue the latest version of the Itanium in April 2012, and a future upgrade is on the chip’s roadmap for 2014. Neither HP nor Intel has announced any plans for the Itanium beyond 2014, though Intel’s CEO has said that a long-term roadmap for Itanium does exist. HP is the largest customer for the Itanium, and losing development support for Oracle software would effectively kill any future sales of servers using the chip and make supporting existing users more costly.

In its weekend filing, Oracle said that it intends to add to its existing lawsuit claims that HP “falsely represent[ed] material facts concerning the Itanium microprocessor family and in particular Intel’s support for it. HP made these false statements — with the specific intent of taking server business away from Oracle Sun and indeed attaining a duopoly in the high-end server business with IBM.”

Oracle is basically claiming that HP is lying about the future of Itanium and that Intel’s “ordinary business calculus” was overridden by HP in an effort to keep customers from abandoning high-end HP servers. The clear implication here is that HP paid off Intel.

Intel’s x86 server business totaled more than $33 billion in 2010, compared with about $4 billion for the company’s Itanium business. If HP wants to keep the Itanium in production, then it is virtually obligated to up its share of the costs of developing the chip. Whether or not HP is behaving as nefariously as Oracle claims remains to be seen.

Of course HP’s bigger problem is overcoming the turmoil caused by the departure of Leo Apotheker as CEO and the installation of Meg Whitman in his place. HP shares have fallen by -43% in the past 12 months. When the company reports earnings after markets close today, analysts are expecting EPS of $1.13 on revenue of $32.05 billion.

More important though will be clues from Whitman about the company’s future direction. In August HP said it was closing its WebOS hardware development, keeping its PC business and spending $11.7 billion to acquire business software company Autonomy. Investors are going to want more details on future strategy and a positive outlook for 2012 earnings.

HP shares are trading down nearly -5% in the first few minutes of trading this morning, at $26.61, in a 52-week range of $21.50-$43.93.

Paul Ausick

AMD layoffs. AMD (NYSE: AMD) said it would cut 10% of its workforce, which is 1,400 people. One of the troubling things about the decision is that AMD is a healthy company financially. It is another in a line of companies that do not absolutely have to cut costs but are doing so to improve margins. AMD’s low-end chip business has poor returns. The demand for PC chips continues to fall. So AMD acted prophylactically.  More large American corporations are likely to do the same, as it is clear the economy has not made a quick turnaround.

Groupon raises IPO share price. Unexpectedly, Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN) raised the price of shares for its IPO to $20, about $4 above the expected range. The company’s business model and losses have come under scrutiny by investors. Many analysts who follow companies that offer coupons online believe it will never be a highly profitable business. But, it is one Groupon will be able to stay in for a long time. The IPO will yield $700 million and value the company at $12.7 billion. The demand for the shares is a signal that investors continue to believe the largest Web 2.0 firms will grow at a rate similar to Google’s five years ago. For the Groupon valuation to be realistic, the company would have to become highly profitable as Google did.

Starubucks’ earnings are grande. Starbuck’s (NASDAQ: SBUX) earnings are a sign that the relatively well-to-do remain willing to pay $4 for fancy coffee drinks. Net income in the period that ended October 2 increased to $358.5 million, or $0.47 a share, from $278.9 million, or $0.37 in the same period a year ago. Starbucks said sales of its Via instant coffee had helped results. But, without strong demand at Starbucks retail outlets, earnings could not have been so strong. Same-store sales for the quarter were up 10%.

MF Global may have goosed balance sheet. The Wall Street Journal reports that MF Global may have dressed up its balance sheet for investors. The financial firm may have disguised debt and risky trading positions. If so, it will not be the only time a bank made “adjustments” to its balance sheet to appear more healthy than it actually was. MF Global CEO Jon Corzine, former head of Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), may be in greater trouble than was assumed when the small investment house filed for Chapter 11.

Douglas A. McIntyre