“Most stores we contacted reported strong follow-through sales last week and have received ‘re-stocks’ following the initial launch,” says McKechnie. “We had guesstimated ~ 200k Verizon-only ‘sell in’ prior to the launch. We now expect at least another 200k by Black Friday and 150-200k through the remainder of the holiday season, which gets us to our 600k forecast for the quarter. All stores appear ‘well stocked’ with none reporting shortages….Our checks with stores indicate no issues with returns of the Droid.”

Evidently, Verizon’s Droid saturation campaign, with a budget estimated at $100 million, is paying off–despite its impersonal sci-fi positioning.

Welcome news, considering that back in June, SIA was calling for chip sales to fall 21 percent.

“The new forecast is brighter than our earlier projections, reflecting an improving global economy,” SIA President George Scalise said in a statement. “Unit sales of key demand drivers–including PCs and cell phones, which together account for about 60% of semiconductor demand–have been stronger than previously predicted. We remain cautiously optimistic for the longer term. The current forecast is closely tied to projections of continuing improvement in the worldwide economy.”

Third-quarter chip sales totaled $61.9 billion, down 10.1 percent from the same quarter last year, but up nearly 20 percent from the second quarter of 2009. No doubt about it, the market for chips is improving (see chart below; click to enlarge).

“Global semiconductor sales in the third quarter were above expectations,” SIA President George Scalise said in a statement. “September sales were in line with historical patterns, reflecting increased demand from end-users as they began the build for the holiday season.”

“Amid signs that we are in the early stages of recovery in the global economy,” Scalise added, “semiconductor sales continue to reflect normal seasonal patterns. Sales are running well ahead of the worst-case scenarios projected early in the year, and we are optimistic that total sales for 2009 will be better than our mid-year forecast.”

Sales are running well ahead of the worst-case scenarios? Well, I suppose any reassurance is a good one when your industry is down 10 percent year-over-year.

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.”

Revenue fell nine percent, year over year, to $2.5 billion, missing the consensus estimate of $2.67 billion. And at 39 cents, profit per share missed analysts’ 42-cent estimate.

Worse, SAP (SAP) reduced its forecast for the year. Where the once Teutonically solid company had foreseen a drop in revenue of four to six percent, it now sees a drop of six to eight percent. Clearly, sales of the software licenses necessary for building ongoing revenue continue to deteriorate.

Add to this Apothekar’s comments about “a particularly challenging environment in Japan and emerging markets” and his claim that “businesses are still very cautious in making major investments,” and you begin to see why SAP’s shares were so brutalized in early afternoon trading.

SAP’s earnings were “a clear miss” analysts at Commerzbank said in a report issued this afternoon. “The lowered software and software-related services guidance for 2009 indicates that the deal pipeline still suffers from a lack of larger deals and that clients remain reluctant to spend on SAP applications.”

In a research note issued this morning, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi wondered whether Oracle (ORCL) might even consider walking away from the deal, though he ultimately concluded that it was unlikely.

“Given ORCL’s repeated and strident commentary, it appears very unlikely that it will walk away from the deal, although it would not face a break-up fee if it did (unlike Sun, which faces a $260+ million break-up fee),” he wrote. “We continue to believe that the JAVA-ORCL deal is very likely to close, but it will be interesting to see if Oracle’s conviction level waivers at all on its earnings call today.”

Indeed. Certainly, there are plenty of reasons to think that it might. For one thing, notes Sacconaghi, Sun’s (JAVA) recent financials are going to make it difficult for for Oracle to hit its promised $1.5 billion in first-year accretion profits.

“Our forecast now calls for [Sun] to be barely break even on a non-GAAP basis next year,” Sacconaghi says, adding that earnings are likely to be nearly $900 million less than he modeled when the deal was first announced. “Accordingly, assuming no material revenue synergies, our analysis suggests that in order to hit its $1.5B accretion target, Oracle may need to reduce Sun’s workforce by 15,000, which represents over 50 percent of Sun’s current headcount and appears implausible.”

So Oracle could hit its aggressive Year One accretion targets. It would just have to gut Sun to do it.

One last point worth noting here. Sacconaghi seems confident the European Union will ultimately approve Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, though possibly with conditions around mySQL. But he thinks approval will take time. And the longer it takes, the worse it will be for Sun, whose business is already suffering from the uncertainty surrounding it.

“…The EU took an average of 140 days between the time that a Phase II [review] was announced and a merger was ultimately approved,” he explains. “Given that Phase II for the JAVA deal was announced on September 3rd, this implies a January date for resolution, and would require JAVA to go through another two full quarters as a standalone company. With uncertainty around the ORCL deal already weighing on JAVA, this suggests the potential for further erosion in Sun’s financials.”

“The sole driver of the increase in Apple’s price target is a higher valuation of the iPhone,” Wolf wrote. “Courtesy of network effects, the explosive growth of the iTunes App Store…should translate into a higher growth trajectory of iPhone sales going forward….By exploiting a commanding lead in the all-important smartphone applications market, the iPhone is in a position to chalk up share gains in this fast-growing market that could surprise everyone….In many respects, Apple and Amazon are in similar positions. Amazon holds a relatively small but growing share of the e-commerce market, which itself is small, but growing an order of magnitude faster than the physical retail market.”

Wolf admits that his latest forecast is “judgmental” in that it’s based on the premise that software, namely iPhone applications, will drive hardware, namely iPhone sales. But he explains that the premise does have a proven track record in markets characterized by increasing returns and network effects.

“We have upped the number of iPhones that will be sold in 2018, the final year in our model, from 67 million to 107 million,” Wolf added. “Our forecast has the phone capturing 20 percent share of the smartphone market in that year, up from 12.5 percent recently. We should note that the iPhone’s share of the worldwide market is already around 12.5 percent. So our forecast is by no means an aggressive one.”

No doubt about it, it’s a good time to be an Apple investor.

For the quarter, Intel (INTC) had been expecting revenue in the range of $8.1 billion to $8.9 billion. Now the company expects revenue to range between $8.8 billion to $9.2 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been forecasting $8.55 billion. Welcome news for tech’s long-suffering investors, which spiked the company’s shares more than four percent to $20.25 in early-morning trading.

Intel is next scheduled to report financials on Oct. 13.

Looks like News Corp. was a little too optimistic when the company told investors in May that it expected a decline of around 30 percent in fiscal-year-adjusted operating income.

Reporting earnings this afternoon, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this Web site instead posted a decline of 32.5 percent.

And, to think, News Corp. lowered that forecast twice last fall.

Anyway, the company lost $203 million, or eight cents a share, in its fiscal fourth quarter. Revenue fell 10.5 percent to $7.67 billion, dragged down by a decrease in ad revenue and $403 million in impairment charges and $228 million in restructuring costs, both largely attributable to, ahem, “red-hot social networking site” MySpace.

For the quarter, News Corp. swung from $1.1 billion in net income a year ago to a net loss of $203 million. Gruesome. Excluding items, however, it earned 19 cents a share, which beat consensus estimates by a penny. So there’s that.

“I think the worst may be behind us,” News Corp. Chief Rupert Murdoch said during a conference call with analysts. “But there are no clear signs yet of a fast economic recovery.”

Which is pretty much what he said last quarter as well. “I am not an economist…but it is increasingly clear that the worst is over,” Murdoch said back in May. “As you know, I have been uncharacteristically pessimistic in recent calls, though I would argue that it was a well-founded concern. But there are emerging signs in some of our businesses that the days of precipitous decline are done and that revenues are beginning to look healthier.”

Sony’s net loss in the quarter was 37.1 billion yen ($390 million), a brutal change from the 35 billion yen profit in the year-ago period. Still, it was smaller than the 109.6 billion yen loss analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been expecting. That said, all three of Sony’s core electronics divisions registered losses for the quarter.

Not a good sign. Because while the company’s smaller-than-expected loss proves its cost-cutting measures have been effective, it also shows that Sony (SNE) must do more than just slash jobs and suppliers if it ever hopes to regain its position in the market. For while cost-cutting might improve Sony’s bottom line, it’s not going to make the company competitive against Samsung, Nintendo and Apple (AAPL), who’ve usurped its position in TVs, gaming consoles and media players, respectively. What Sony needs most is not more cost-cutting; it’s a new gotta-have-it product.

Seriously. It’s been, what, 30 years since the debut of the Walkman?

Earnings were $2.32 per share, up from $1.97 per share in the same period last year, and well above the $2.02 per share the Street was looking for. Sales were $23.25 billion, lower than the $23.59 billion predicted by analysts, but second-quarter net income was $3.1 billion, up 12 percent year-over-year.

IBM, it seems, is generally weathering the econalypse pretty well (investor presentation). Indeed, the company raised EPS guidance for the full year, saying it now expects to earn at least $9.70 per share this year, compared to its previous forecast of $9.20. (Click on Highlights summary below to enlarge.)

“As a result of our strategic transformation, we have a very strong business model that is delivering superior earnings, cash, and client value,” said IBM CEO Sam Palmisano in a statement. “We are optimistic about how IBM is positioned to make the most of current growth opportunities as well as those that emerge as the economy recovers.”

I guess IBM’s practice of sacking U.S. employees and shifting their jobs to lower-cost countries is serving it quite well in this souring economy.

IBM (IBM) shares, which are already up more than a quarter this year, rose another 2.1 percent to $112.93 on the news.

That’s the word from Gartner, which back in March was claiming the decline would be just 3.8 percent. The research outfit said Tuesday that it expects tech spending to fall to $3.2 trillion this year, down from $3.4 trillion in 2008. And it sees all four major segments of IT–hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications–suffering revenue declines in 2009 (click on chart below).

“The forecast decline in spending growth for the hardware and software segments in 2009 has almost stabilized, and only minor downward revisions have been made to these forecasts this quarter,” said Gartner’s Richard Gordon. “However, the full impact of the global recession on the IT services and telecommunications sectors is still emerging, and forecast growth in these areas has been further reduced significantly.”

That said, the company sees a rebound of 2.3 percent in 2010.

Gartner (IT) is the latest research firm to temper its projections for information technology spending this year in light of the ever-souring economy. Last week Forrester (FORR) lowered its expectations for 2009, saying the first two quarters of the year were worse than expected and that the decline will carry out for the rest of the year. It did, however, say we can expect a rebound in 2010.