Evidently not. During a post-earnings conference call Monday, Brocade (BRCD) CEO Michael Klayko said the company has not “quietly put itself up for sale” as people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal back in October.

“That is just false,” Klayko said of the rumors, which claimed Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Oracle (ORCL) as possible suitors.

Guess those reports that Brocade had hired Frank Quattrone’s merchant banking boutique Qatalyst to shop it around were a bit off …

“HP’s solid performance in Services drove record profit, and the accelerated pace in signings creates strong momentum going into 2010,” said CEO Mark Hurd. “Our operational execution and improving cost structure generated strong quarterly and year-end results. We expect to outperform the market due to our significant scale, broad portfolio and market-leading position.”

Looking ahead to its first quarter, HP sees revenue of $29.6 billion to $29.9 billion and diluted earnings per share of 90 cents to 92 cents.

With the consumer electronic industry still languishing, Sony (SNE) has little reason to be optimistic. In an interview with Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore, CEO Howard Stringer said he’s seen little sign of a recovery in Sony’s business. “From my viewpoint, that of Sony and its consumer electronics products the picture for the time being has not improved very much,” Stringer said. “There hasn’t been that turning point that many had hoped for. We are waiting for a signal that hasn’t arrived.”

The acquisition, which has been approved by both companies’ boards, should bolster HP’s data center strategy and, thanks to 3Com’s routing business, intensify competition with rival Cisco (CSCO), which has lately been expanding into HP’s businesses.

“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor,” Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP, said in a statement.

“By acquiring 3Com,” Donatelli added, “we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.”

Below, the official release:

HP to Acquire 3Com for $2.7 Billion
Will create networking industry powerhouse with a proven, edge-to-data center set of solutions and global reach

PALO ALTO, Calif., and MARLBOROUGH, Mass., Nov. 11, 2009

HP and 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) (”3Com”) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase 3Com, a leading provider of networking switching, routing and security solutions, at a price of $7.90 per share in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion. The terms of the transaction have been approved by the HP and 3Com boards of directors.

This combination will transform the networking industry and underscore HP’s next-generation data center strategy built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services. The resulting business outcome will help customers simplify the network, deploy a unique and innovative edge-to-core network fabric for the enterprise and improve IT service delivery capabilities, all delivered with best-in-class price-performance.

“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor,” said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP. “By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.”

“Our extensive product line and innovative technology together with HP’s breadth and scale will expand our global opportunity,” said Bob Mao, chief executive officer, 3Com. “3Com’s networking products are based on a modern architecture which has been designed to offer better performance, require less power and eliminate administrative complexity when compared against current network offerings. Our products are enterprise proven and widely deployed in the world’s largest banks, manufacturers, Internet service providers, public utilities and retailers.”

The acquisition of 3Com will dramatically expand HP’s Ethernet switching offerings, add routing solutions and significantly strengthen the company’s position in China–one of the world’s fastest-growing markets–via the H3C offerings. In addition, the combination will add a large and talented research and development team in China that will drive the acceleration of innovations to HP’s networking solutions.

3Com also brings to HP best-of-breed network security capabilities through its TippingPoint portfolio. For the past four years, TippingPoint has been the leader in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” in its evaluation of leading network security products. Approximately 30 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have already deployed TippingPoint intrusion prevention systems.

“We are confident that we can run our entire global business of 300,000-plus employees, including our next-generation data centers, entirely on the new HP networking solutions,” said Randy Mott, executive vice president and chief information officer, HP. “Based on our experience and extensive testing of 3Com’s products, we are planning to undertake a global rollout within HP as soon as possible after the completion of the acquisition.”

Under the terms of the merger agreement, 3Com stockholders will receive $7.90 for each share of 3Com common stock that they hold at the closing of the merger. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of domestic and foreign regulatory approvals and the approval of 3Com’s stockholders. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of calendar 2010.

HP anticipates that the transaction will be slightly dilutive to fiscal 2010 non-GAAP earnings.

According to a 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sun (JAVA) lost $120 million, or 16 cents a share, on revenue of $2.24 billion in its first quarter. During the same period a year ago, Sun lost $1.68 billion, or $2.24 a share, on $2.99 billion in sales. Analysts had been expecting earnings of 25 cents a share on revenue of $2.31 billion.

Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison recently said that Sun is losing about $100 million a month as it waits for European antitrust regulators to approve its acquisition by Oracle. Looks like he’s about right.

Below, excerpts from the 10-Q:

Server Products Revenue
The decrease in Server Products revenue during the first quarter of fiscal 2010, as compared to the corresponding period in fiscal 2009, was primarily due to the economic downturn and consolidation of our customer base, specifically in the financial services sector, as projects were scaled back, delayed or canceled, in addition to the uncertainty associated with the proposed acquisition by Oracle and increased competition.

Storage Products Revenue
The decrease in Storage Products revenue during the first quarter of fiscal 2010, as compared to the corresponding period in fiscal 2009, was primarily attributable to the economic downturn as projects were scaled back, delayed or canceled, in addition to the uncertainty associated with our proposed acquisition by Oracle and increased competition.

North America
The decrease in revenue during the first quarter of fiscal 2010, as compared to the corresponding period in fiscal 2009, was primarily due to decreased sales of our enterprise Server Products, storage disk products and Services. We are still seeing the results of IT budget cuts instituted last year by our largest customers due to the economic downturn, especially in the financial services sector, in addition to the consolidation of our customer base. Across all sectors, non-critical projects are on hold. Revenue was also negatively impacted by the uncertainty associated with our proposed acquisition by Oracle and increased competition.

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Absent one-time charges, the company broke even for the quarter. Analysts had been expecting a two-cent loss on revenue of $609 million.

Good news, but it was tempered with a bit of bad. Because Sirius’s (SIRI) subscriber growth is slowing. The company ended the quarter with 18.5 million total subscribers. That’s up 103,000 from the second quarter, but down 2.1 percent from a year earlier.

“We are very pleased with what we accomplished during the third quarter, especially when considering the macroeconomic issues affecting consumers and the auto industry,” Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin said in a statement.

“We managed to grow revenue, grow ARPU, reduce operating costs, increase adjusted income from operations significantly, and refinance higher cost debt,” Karmazin added. “We look forward to continuing this performance. We grew subscribers and improved churn in the quarter, and we are well positioned to take advantage of an economic rebound. We expect to grow subscribers, revenue, and cash flow next year regardless of the magnitude of any recovery.”

Excluding special items, NetSuite (N) said earnings for the quarter were one cent a share. Said NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson: “We are very pleased to report record revenue and record cash flow.”

Excluding one-time items, Cisco (CSCO) said it earned 36 cents a share, down from 42 cents a share in the same period last year. Still, that was better than the consensus estimate. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the company to deliver a profit of 31 cents a share on sales of $8.745 billion.

“Building off what we saw as a clear tipping point in Q4, our Q1 results continued to reflect strong sequential growth trends that meet or exceed expectations during normal economic times,” CEO John Chambers said in a statement.

“We view the improving economic outlook, combined with solid execution on our growth strategy, as creating unparalleled opportunity to drive more value into the core of the network,” Chambers continued. “Simply said, we believe that key market transitions across collaboration, virtualization and video will drive productivity and growth in network loads for the next decade, and are evolving even faster than expected.”

At $24.20, shares in the company are trading up nearly four percent on the news.

Sony (SNE) lost 26.3 billion yen ($289 million) for the period, considerably narrower than a 40.4 billion yen consensus estimate. Sales and operating revenue for the quarter fell to 1.66 trillion yen from 2.07 trillion yen a year earlier, dragged down by a strong yen, flaccid consumer demand and fierce price competition for videogame consoles and TVs.

Looking ahead, Sony improved the outlook for its fiscal year, saying it expects annual losses of 95 billion yen this year, a slight improvement over its initial estimate of 120 billion yen. Still, the company warned that the all important Christmas shopping period would likely be a weak one. “We are quite cautious in foreseeing end-of-year sales,” Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda said during a conference call with analysts. “In the first quarter and second quarter there was an upside in sales, but the critical moment is the Christmas season and we are not too optimistic.”

In its second quarter–the first with the Pre in its lineup–Sprint (S) lost 991,000 postpaid subscribers. And in its third, reported yesterday, its lost 801,000. So subscriber loss, while unquestionably gruesome, is diminishing.

How much of this is due to Palm’s (PALM) Pre? Not that much, says CL King & Associates analyst Lawrence Harris, who believes the Pre had only a moderate impact on Sprint’s postpaid subscriber base.

“Within postpaid, the number of CDMA-only subscriber losses was about 100,000 in the September quarter, compared to the 200,000 in the June quarter,” Harris wrote in a research note to clients. “At Sprint, the Palm Pre is a CDMA-only postpaid device. The number of Sprint postpaid subscribers upgrading their handsets was slightly higher in the September quarter than in the June quarter at just over 2.0 million.”

According to Harris, “This number provides some indication of the available market for all high-end devices at Sprint. In Palm’s August quarter, 85% of the company’s sales went to Sprint. Given the absence of growth in Sprint’s CDMA postpaid category, it appears likely that most of the Palm Pre sales went to existing Sprint subscribers as opposed to winning customers from other carriers.”

That would seem to be the case. Sprint rivals AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless (VZ) each added subscribers during the second quarter–1.4 million and 1.1 million, respectively. So if the Pre did anything for Sprint, it helped to stem CDMA postpaid losses a bit.

And that’s something, right? After all, there’s no panacea for Sprint’s affliction–well, perhaps there is, but it’s locked up in an exclusivity agreement with AT&T (T). Still, when Sprint last reported earnings, CEO Dan Hesse said the carrier expected to sign up more new customers as the Pre gained wider distribution through retail outlets like Best Buy (BBY) and RadioShack. And that doesn’t really seemed to have happened. Perhaps next quarter after Sprint launches the Pre’s not-quite-cheaper sibling, the Pixi.

UPDATE: A quick addendum. In a research note this morning, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett notes that while Sprint has reduced subscriber losses a bit, the cost of doing so has been worrisomely high.

“Yes, net subscriber losses were better,” Moffet explains. “But the cost was very high. Post-paid equipment subsidies soared to $139 per subsidized subscriber in Q3 (up 39 percent from last year), as the company recovered just 36 percent of their equipment costs….Yesterday’s results illustrate why it may not be possible for Sprint to have its cake and eat it too. After all the drastic cost cutting, after all the efforts to refresh the product line, after all the price cuts and new pricing plans, Sprint was able to manage only a modest improvement. Not growth, just a slightly slower rate of decline. And that Herculean effort almost broke the bank. The huge costs of even marginally improving gross additions (and the rate of net subscriber loss) crushed margins.”

As a result, Nintendo’s operating profit fell 52 percent to 64 billion yen, missing the company’s own forecast of 100 billion yen, as well as estimates of analysts, who were expecting 90 billion.

That shortfall prompted Nintendo to cut projections on Wii sales for the year to 20 million from 26 million. Thursday, the company also slashed its profit forecast for the year by almost a quarter to $2.6 billion. That’s 18 percent less than last year and nearly 25 percent less than the 300 billion yen it had earlier projected.

This despite a recent Wii price cut intended to drive sales of the device. Clearly, something more is needed here. Said Barclays analyst Mia Nagasaka: “Nintendo needs to build up a sales-promotion scheme or introduce a new product to drive its earnings.”

Not the prettiest of quarters, but that penny-a-share profit beat the consensus estimates of analysts, who had expected the company to simply break even.

“We delivered on our commitment to improve the financial performance of Mobile Devices and to commercially launch two smartphones in time for the fourth-quarter holiday season,” Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of Mobile Devices, said in a statement.

“The introductions of our new products powered by Android,” Jha continued, “are important milestones as we begin to address the mobilization of the Internet and the growing demand for modern smartphones. Next year, we will continue to expand our smartphone portfolio and deliver improved financial results.”

Glad those layoffs are paying off for someone.

Which is not to say that Motorola’s suffering is over. Sales at the company’s struggling wireless division dropped a precipitous 46 percent to $1.7 billion. Its estimated global market share is now 4.7 percent, compared with 8.4 percent it claimed in 2008. An ugly decline indeed.

That said, with some strong new Android handsets in the pipeline, things are beginning to look up for Motorola (MOT). At $8.44, company shares are trading up six percent this morning.