Randomly Noted

There is clearly a lot of positioning going on by AT&T to convince the public and U.S. regulators that its proposed acquisition of rival T Mobile from Deutsche Telecom shouldn’t be viewed as anti-competitive. One certainly might think that when two of  the top leaders in any industry join forces.

If you check out the AT&T website, already there is a video of CEO Randall Stephensen discussing, among other things, his respect for regulators. There is a brief presentation of the deal that shows how consolidation has not hurt pricing. to the contrary, prices have come down since consolidation has been underway.

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“We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of the calendar year.”

That’s Steve Jobs commenting on Apple’s strong quarter which saw big increases in computer sales, iPhone sales and the most recent product added to its must-have arsenal: the iPad. The company said it has sold 4.188 iPads in the most recent quarter. That pushes the number sold since launch to nearly 7.5 million units.

Jobs took aim at Smartphone competitor Research In Motion, saying Apple sold more iPhones this quarter than RIM sold Blackberrys in the most recently reported quarter.

One cna only image what Jobs has up his sleeve.

iSuppli, a semiconductor industry research shop, told us yesterday that semiconductor inventory levels were in the oversupply mode – the latest piece of information to indicate a slowdown in the chip and PC markets.

Intel just confirmed it. While the chip maker reported record revenue of more than $11 billion for the third-quarter, it trimmed back its revenue forecasts for the fourth quarter on what it cited as consumer softness and inventory reduction. In other words, it is sitting on too many chips, despite the strong sales of products in the third-quarter.  It noted that prices for chips were flat in the quarter. Oversupply likely means lower prices are around the corner. Good for makers of PCs. Not good for people who make chips.

When we think of technology, things like iPads or incredible smart phones or those incredibly small but good cameras come to mind. Not bland things like storage. But data storage and analyzing tons of data being stored are two of the hottest areas these days in technology.

IBM became the latest company to express an interest in data storage and analytics with its offer to buy Netezza for $1.7 billion. One of the attractions for IBM could be that Netezza apparently not only knows its business, but knows how to it much more cheaply than others. As the company says on its website:  ”Think of Netezza as a Ferrari, with the price and efficiency of an economy car.”

The question is whether other companies will bid up for the business, taking the economy out of this economy car and making it more fully priced.

Add a new player to the smartphone market.

Dell unveiled the Aero earlier today and the key question will be what points of differentiation the new phone offers. It will run on Google’s Android software and that means users of this phone will have access to abut 40,000 applications. And it costs $99 if you sign-up for two years with AT&T. That’s the same price for buying the iPhone 3Gs (the older version) and Apple says its iPhone has more than 200,000 apps.

One big difference seems to be that the Dell phone will suport Adobe flash, which powers a lot of internet video. Apple has no plans to incorporate Adobe flash into its phones or tablets.

On the face of it, the fourth quarter earnings report from Cisco Systems this afternoon looked pretty strong. Sales were up 27%. Net income was up 79%.

The stock market’s reaction? Cisco’s shares fell 4.4% because of tepid comments from the company’s CEO about 1Q revenues. And even though the company met guidance it gave earlier in the quarter, investors apparently expected Cisco to beat those numbers nonetheless.

One interesting note from CEO John Chambers: from speaking with customers, he doesn’t believe the economy is headed for a double-dip recession. But that said, he doesn’t believe it will recover as quickly as some had previously thought. Growth, but slower growth.

Intel late today reported its best quarterly earnings and sales in its 42-year history as corporations and small businesses significantly increased orders for PCs and servers powered by Intel chips. Clearly, companies that cut back capital exchpenditure budgets during the recent recession began to feel more comfortable starting to make those purchases again. The two open questions are whether this increase in demand will have a carryover effect into other quarters for Intel? And, which PC makers were the beneficiary of corporate buying?

Stay tuned.

The simmering feud between Apple and Google just got a little warmer. As part of Apple iPhone4 announcement on Monday, the company said it would allow Microsoft’s Bing to be an alternative search option to Google.  There had apparently been talk that Apple might consider using Bing as its default search option instead of Google. And while it didn’t go quite that far, this move is yet another example of how delicate the relationship is between the two companies. To see PC World’s story on this, click here.

Two technology giants are having a linear debate that boils down to this question: who’s a truck?

Our Randomly Noted blog has been out of commission for nearly two weeks, having been affected with the Artemis! trojan virus. Our tech people at Dow Jones helped us get to the bottom of the problem and our blog has finally been restored. This nasty virus did more than kill our blogs – it spread this malicious virus to others who opened up our blog. For that, we apologize and hope we didn’t create huge problems for our reader base.

We hope you’ve missed us over the past two weeks. We certainly have missed writing for you. Look for us to slowly ramp up our blogging production over the next few days.

And thanks again for your patience.