The numbers are truly impressive. The AAR counted 259,141 petroleum carloads last week. Just over a year ago, the count was just shy of 120,000 carloads for the comparable week. And that represented a rise of nearly 30% from the same week in 2011. Rail transportation of crude oil and petroleum products has nearly tripled in three years.

Coal shipments by rail still outnumber petroleum shipments by about eight to one, but coal carloads are down 5.6% year-to-date, compared with last year. And the number of carloads of grain has fallen 16% in the same period.

Among the railroads, the big winner is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF), which is owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) and plies the rails along the northern tier, including the oil-producing states of North Dakota and Montana. Railroads that depend more heavily on coal shipments, like CSX Corp. (NYSE: CSX), Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC) and Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE: UNP), have all experienced double-digit percentage drops in coal ships, weighing on revenues and profits.

In the first quarter of 2012, Apple claimed tablet market share of 58.1%, which has dropped to a 39.6% (19.5 million units) share in the first quarter of this year. Samsung, the number two vendor, shipped 8.8 million units for a 17.9% share, up from 11.3% in the year ago quarter.

The data comes from International Data Corp.’s (IDC) Quarterly Tablet Tracker.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) fell from third place to fourth, trailing Asus by about 900,000 units shipped. Amazon’s market share actually rose slightly, however, from 3.6% a year ago to 3.7% this year. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) broke into the top five hardware vendors with shipments of 900,000 units and market share of 1.8%.

On the operating system platform side, Android, the Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) platform is now the market share leader with 56.5% share, followed by iOS from Apple with 39.6% share, and Windows from Microsoft with a 3.3% share.

In early March, IDC forecast tablet shipments for the full year at 190 million units. At the current pace, even with no growth (very unlikely), that number is in the rearview mirror. At least 200 million units now looks like a minimum number of tablet shipments in 2013. And the demand for small-screen devices will continue to set the pace.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global tablet shipments reached 40.6 million units in the first quarter of 2013. Android secured a robust 43 percent global share, while Apple iOS maintained its strong leadership at 48 percent. Windows secured a 7.5 percent global share.

Peter King, Director of Tablets at Strategy Analytics, said, “Global branded tablet shipments reached an all-time high of 40.6 million units in Q1 2013, surging 117 percent from 18.7 million in Q1 2012. Demand for tablets among consumer, business and education users remains strong. Apple produced a solid performance this quarter as the Mini had its first full term and shipped a robust 19.5 million mixed iPads worldwide maintaining market leadership with 48 percent share during the first quarter of 2013. Android captured a record 43 percent share of global branded tablet shipments in Q1 2013, rising from 34 percent a year earlier. Global Android tablet shipments increase 177 per cent annually to 17.6 million units.”

On a GAAP basis, the company’s net loss totaled $0.33 per share.

The 18-month decline in coal shipments and coal pricing have taken a heavy toll on the coal miners. Last week Peabody Energy Co. (NYSE: BTU) reported a smaller-than-expected loss of $0.05 per share, and the company’s stock rose more than 3%. Something similar likely will happen with Arch Coal’s stock today.

The company’s CEO said:

Despite the global coal market headwinds that have prevailed over the last 18 months, we are delivering strong cost control, exercising capital restraint and minimizing cash outflows in the trough of the market cycle … Globally, we believe metallurgical and thermal coal markets are in the process of stabilizing, and we anticipate gradual improvement as we progress through the remainder of the year.

The improvement Arch Coal sees is a function of depleting stockpiles at power generating plants as natural gas prices rise. That is good for the miners, but the process is slow and Arch Coal expects the rest of 2013 to present a story of (very) slow growth mainly as a result of cost reduction.

Arch Coal has maintained its earlier forecast of 125 million to 135 million tons of thermal coal shipments for the year, but it has lowered its cash cost estimates both in the Powder River Basin and in Appalachia. The company expects to ship 8 million to 9 million tons of metallurgical coal in 2013 and has already received commitments for 6.5 million tons, of which 61.1 million tons is priced at about $91 a ton.

The company’s shares are up 1% in premarket trading at $4.94 in a 52-week range of $4.47 to $10.26. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $7.50 before today’s report.

In an Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, VIVUS showed that Qsymia prescriptions rose from 16,733 in January to 18,417 in February for growth of about 10%. The better news is that shipments rose to 23,812 prescriptions in March, and that represents growth of about 29%. Accelerating growth is music to ears of investors, but we caution that making bets too large on a one-month trend this early in the game are certainly no assurance that Qsymia will reach the $1 billion blockbuster drug status in the years ahead.

VIVUS only launched Qsymia to the market back on September 17, 2012. There is just too little time and too little of prescription distribution data to make serious forecasts ahead. The other good news is that these figures are ahead of the preliminary fresh projections made by BofA/Merrill Lynch.

Shares of VIVUS are up almost 5% in premarket trading, at $12.66 against a 52-week trading range of $9.86 to $31.21. The market value as of yesterday’s close was $1.22 billion.

Among the obvious stocks hurt by the collapse are PC makers Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD). The drop in sales probably hit Microsoft worst of all this morning, after the company’s stock was downgraded to Sell by analysts at Goldman Sachs. There are several other stocks, though, that will be hurt by the fall in PC sales.

Chip stocks that are taking some lumps today include Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA), down about 2%, and Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL), down about 1%. Nvidia’s graphics chip business and Marvell’s disk drive controller shipments are both in jeopardy from falling PC shipments.

Disk drive makers Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ: STX) and Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) are both being hit by the lack of PC shipments. Seagate’s shares are down 3.8% and Western Digital’s shares are down about 3% this morning. Storage systems giant EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) is down less than 1%, but its business depends less on PC sales than on sales of servers and mainframe computers.

HP’s first quarter shipments were down by 23.7% year-over-year in the first quarter, according to IDC, while Dell shipments fell nearly 11%. Among other PC makers, Acer’s shipments fell more than 31%, and Asus shipments dropped nearly 20%. Not a pretty picture.

Microsoft shares have been hit hard, down 5% to $28.78, in a 52-week range of $26.26 to $32.89. An IDC executive noted, “[T]he Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market.” That’s terrible news for the software giant that cannot seem to break into the smartphone and tablet markets and grab any kind of serious market share.

HP’s shares are down about 6%, at $20.96 in a 52-week range of $11.35 to $25.40. The company managed to hold off Lenovo to maintain its position as the world’s largest PC maker, but that is probably cold comfort today.

Dell is down just 0.5%m at $14.14 in a 52-week range of $8.69 to $16.61. Dell’s price is propped up by the outstanding buyout offer from founder Michael Dell and his partners. But the company’s largest business is clearly in serious trouble.

Among the heaviest users of video are consumers in Brazil, China, Russia, and South Korea, with 43%, 39%, 36%, and 44% of consumers, respectively, reporting that they use their devices to watch video. That’s all the so-called BRIC countries except India, where feature phones still outnumber smartphones by a wide margin. In the U.S., 28% of mobile phone owners watch video on their phones.

In the U.S. and China more than 70% of video watchers use the mobile web, while 72% of U.S. video consumers use an app. That’s far more than anywhere else in the world and is likely attributable to the availability of faster 3G and 4G networks. Watching video through apps is growing as well in China (55%) and the U.K. (59%), while 57% of Indians download clips for later viewing.

More than 40% of U.S. users watch a least one video a day, while nearly half of Brazilian and Chinese view at least one video a day. Some 37% of Chinese phone owners watch more than one video a day, while a third of Brazilians watch two or more. In the U.S., only 9% of phone owners watch more than one video a day.

There are a couple of developments to watch for going forward. One is whether or not companies that host videos can turn these viewing habits into revenue. The leading global video site is Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube, where virtually all video viewing is currently free.

The second is whether or not mobile viewing eventually displaces traditional TV viewing habits. So far, according to Nielsen, mobile video supplements traditional viewing habits and does not supplant them. That could change as companies like Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), and other web-based video providers add original programming to their arsenal.

The Nielsen report is available here.

None of this is good news for the TV makers. According to research from NPD DisplaySearch, North American shipments were flat in 2012, shipments to Japan and Western Europe fell by 6% and shipments to China rose 6%. China was the world’s largest market, taking 52 million — or nearly a quarter — of global shipments. Sales in emerging markets were also down, with only Eastern Europe, up 17%, showing strong growth and that due to a switchover from analog to digital broadcasting.

Samsung took 27.7% of global revenues for flat panel TVs in 2012, up from 24.8% in 2011. Revenue share was down at Panasonic, Sony and Sharp by 26%, 34% and 22%, respectively. Overall, flat panel TV revenues were down 5% year over year.

Are people not buying TVs because they are buying other devices like tablets and smartphones? That may be true in the developed market, but clearly Chinese consumers are buying TVs in big numbers. Or could it be that TVs do not change much from year to year? 3D TV never caught on, super HD TV is still too costly for the mass market and consumers in developed countries already have flat panel TVs.

This is a move which signals that business remains challenged, and its implied guidance also confirms that. The EA board of directors has appointed Larry Probst as EA’s executive chairman while it looks for a permanent CEO. EA has signaled that it will consider internal and external candidates and will also hire a leading executive search firm.

The company’s quote included, “We have mutually agreed that this is the right time for a leadership transition.” That might not be a firing and the departure might not be on bad terms. The flip-side is that this confirms that the company knows it will take new blood to drive initiatives in whatever form they are going to take on.

We noted that the implication is for more weakness. EA signaled that revenues and earnings for the current quarter will be at the low-end of expectations or will even fall slightly below its previously issued guidance.

Still, the stock is up on news that new blood will bring new direction for the company. EA shares closed down 0.9% at $18.71 on the day against a 52-week range of $10.77 to $19.51. Being that close to a 52-week high is very misleading. EA shares were peaking at almost $25 in 2011 and its stock was north of $50 back before the recession took hold.

EA shares are up over 3% at $19.31. A CEO has to feel bad when issuing an earnings and sales warning but thew stock rises because a new unnamed CEO will get to change things.

New blood is what this company needs. The question which remains to be answered is whether or not EA has waited too long to bring in new blood. Hopefully it doesn’t think that an out-of-favor recently fired daily deals CEO in Chicago is the answer.

In the same period a year ago, Costco reported EPS of $0.90 on revenue of $22.51 billion. This morning’s results also compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $1.06 and $25.05 billion in revenue.

For the quarter, same-store sales rose 5%, both including and excluding gasoline sales. EPS was positively influenced by a $0.10 a share tax benefit.

The company offered no guidance in its earnings announcement, but the consensus estimate for the quarter ending in May calls for EPS of $1.03 on revenues of $24.43 billion. For the full 2013 fiscal year, EPS is estimated at $4.50 on revenues of $106.57 billion.

Costco’s net income for the quarter totaled $547 million and the company’s revenue from membership fees totaled $528 million. That is Costco’s edge over Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT). Costco raised its membership fees in late 2011 by 10%.

Shares are up about 1% in premarket trading, at $103.48 in a 52-week range of $81.98 to $105.97. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $105.70 before today’s results were announced.