Gartner (IT) figures Acer sold 12.5 million PCs in the quarter, a year-over-year increase of 23.6 percent from last-year’s third quarter and 15.4 percent of the global market. By contrast, it says Dell (DELL) sold 10.3 million PCs–6.7 percent fewer than it sold a year ago–for a 12.8 percent market share. Meanwhile, IDC pegs Acer at 14 percent global market share and Dell at 12.7 percent.

Both research houses put Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) on top, with Gartner showing the company at 19.9 percent of PCs shipped and IDC at 20.2 percent.

According to the research outfit, Mac sales for July and August are up seven percent year-over-year. If this proves true, Apple (AAPL) should sell somewhere around 2.75 and 2.8 million Macs in the quarter, which would match or slightly exceed Wall Street consensus estimates. IPod sales should meet estimates as well, though NPD reports that year-over-year sales during July and August were down 16 percent.

Munster figures Apple will sell 9.5 million to 10.5 million iPods for the quarter. The Street is looking for 10 million, and with the launch of the newest nano, Apple will likely meet this goal.

“We are expecting reacceleration in the final month of the quarter given the new iPod nanos that shipped on 9/9,” Munster explained. “Also, iPod international is growing faster than domestic. In other words, we believe the actual reported numbers for iPod will be slightly better than NPD would suggest.”

The move, which will be effective immediately upon its announcement, is quite a blow for Intel (INTC). Gelsinger had done stints as the company’s chief technology officer and as head of its research division. He helped quarterback Intel’s 386 and 486 processors, played a major role in the launch of Nehalem and had been considered a likely successor to Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Now he’s a contender for the top job at EMC (EMC) when CEO Joe Tucci decides to step down.

Good thing Wall Street wasn’t expecting much from Microsoft. Because it didn’t get it.

After market close Thursday, the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant reported that fiscal fourth-quarter net income fell to $3.05 billion, or 34 cents a share, from $4.3 billion, or 46 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue for the period ended in June fell 17 percent to $13.1 billion. Wall Street had been looking for earnings of 36 cents a share on $14.37 billion in revenue, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.

Online advertising revenue decreased $86 million, or 14 percent, to $529 million, primarily reflecting a decline in display advertising.

The company missed estimates by $1 billion. Gruesome.

“Our business continued to be negatively impacted by weakness in the global PC and server markets,” CFO Chris Liddell said in a statement. “In light of that environment, it was an excellent achievement to deliver over $750 million of operational savings compared to the prior year quarter.”

Microsoft shares are trading down more than eight percent at $23.50, as I write this.

Below is the full earnings release. BoomTown’s Kara Swisher will be liveblogging the earnings call later this afternoon.

Microsoft Reports Fourth-Quarter Results

The company delivered operational efficiency and innovation in a difficult environment

REDMOND, Wash., July 23, 2009–Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $13.10 billion for the fourth quarter ended June 30, 2009, a 17% decline from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $3.99 billion, $3.05 billion and $0.34 per share, which represented declines of 30%, 29% and 26%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period.

“Our business continued to be negatively impacted by weakness in the global PC and server markets,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “In light of that environment, it was an excellent achievement to deliver over $750 million of operational savings compared to the prior year quarter.”

The financial results for the fourth quarter ended June 30, 2009, included the deferral of $276 million of revenue related to the Windows 7 Upgrade Option program that was announced on June 25, 2009. This revenue deferral reduced earnings per share by $0.02.

The fourth-quarter financial results also included $193 million of legal charges, $108 million of impairments to investments and $40 million of additional severance charges related to the previously announced plan. Operating expenses were reduced by $105 million of capitalized research and development expenses due to the technical milestones reached for Windows 7. Combined, these items also reduced earnings per share by $0.02.

Significant product milestones were achieved in the quarter including the releases of Windows 7 release candidate, Windows Server 2008 R2 release candidate, as well as Bing, Microsoft’s search engine designed to help people make faster, more informed decisions.

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, Microsoft reported revenue of $58.44 billion, a 3% decline from the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the year were $20.36 billion, $14.57 billion and $1.62, which represented declines of 9%, 18% and 13% respectively.

“While economic conditions presented challenges this year, we maintained our focus on delivering customer satisfaction and providing solutions to our customers to save money,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. “I am very excited by the wave of product and services innovations being delivered in this next fiscal year.”

Business Outlook

Microsoft is providing operating expense guidance of $26.6 billion to $26.9 billion, for the full year ending June 30, 2010.

Management will discuss fourth-quarter results and the company’s business outlook on a conference call and webcast at 2:30 p.m. PDT (5:30 p.m. EDT) today.

Nortel Networks has rejected Research In Motion’s bid for the wireless infrastructure assets Nortel is unloading as part of bankruptcy proceedings. RIM said Monday night that it intended to offer $1.1 billion for Nortel’s CDMA and LTE businesses, but was told it could do so only if it agreed not to bid on other Nortel assets, something it had intended to do.

In a blistering statement, RIM (RIMM) accused Nortel (NT) of imposing unfair conditions on the court-supervised auction of its assets and of jeopardizing their continued Canadian ownership.

“RIM is extremely disappointed that Nortel’s world leading technology, the development of which has been funded in part by Canadian taxpayers, seems destined to leave Canada,” said co-CEO Jim Balsillie. “RIM remains extremely interested in acquiring Nortel assets through a Canadian ownership solution that would serve the dual purpose of keeping key wireless technologies in Canada and extending RIM’s leadership in the research, development and distribution of leading edge wireless solutions, but RIM has found itself blocked at every turn.”

Why? Nortel says RIM was late to the game and hasn’t followed proper auction procedure.

“Other parties moved expeditiously to comply with the court approved procedures to become a qualified bidder,” the company said in a statement. “It was not until July 15, 2009, that RIM submitted a letter to Nortel asking to be a qualified bidder and since that time, Nortel has diligently attempted to work with RIM on acceptable confidentiality terms relating to Nortel’s valuable intellectual property assets, but RIM refused to comply with the court approved procedures.”

What’s really going on here? It’s hard to say, though clearly there’s more to the story. After all, RIM’s $1.1 billion bid is far, far more than Nokia Siemens’s stalking horse bid of $650 million. And what does RIM want with the CDMA business, anyway?

According to a new survey from Vlingo, a company that develops speech-recognition technology for mobile phones, 26 percent of its nationwide sample of 4,816 mobile phone users said they sent texts while driving. This despite laws against Driving While Texting in some seven states and some nasty DWT-related accidents. The states with the highest percentage of DWT drivers: Tennessee (42 percent), New Jersey (35 percent), Alabama (34), Idaho (33) and Oklahoma (31.7).

Ironically, 83 percent of the people surveyed said they feel texting while driving should be illegal.

“In just one year, the public conversation about the issue of DWT has escalated, particularly in the wake of some high-profile accidents,” Dave Grannan, chief executive of Vlingo, said in a statement. “Texting is such an integral component of our daily lives, and the cautionary tales about DWT danger have not stemmed the tide. We predicted last year that this problem would get worse, and it has since more people are texting. The good news is that many state legislatures are starting to take up this issue, and today more advanced technologies exist that can increase safety on the roads.”

My God, if one in four drivers admit to driving while texting, how many more were too ashamed to?

How quickly things changed. By 2007, Davidson had been joined by 11 other lobbyists, among them a former high-ranking Justice Department antitrust lawyer. And now, two years later, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been named by President Obama to his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In that role he’ll work with a group of distinguished academics and executives–a group that, incidentally, includes Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft (MSFT)–to help the administration “formulate policy in the many areas where understanding of science, technology, and innovation is key to strengthening our economy and forming policy that works for the American people.”

Schmidt’s appointment isn’t all that surprising. He served as an informal adviser to Obama during his campaign and he’s a smart guy who’s got some strong opinions about network neutrality, next-generation broadband, and intellectual property–issues that figure high on the president’s tech agenda. Still, it’s one more indication–and the biggest one yet–that Google has become firmly part of the Washington establishment.

Mr. Papermaster’s employment by Apple is a violation of his agreement with IBM against working for a competitor should he leave IBM. We will vigorously pursue this case in court.”

– IBM, October 2008

IBM’s legal efforts to enforce a noncompete agreement that would have prevented 26-year company veteran Mark Papermaster from jumping ship for a high-profile job at Apple appear to have failed. In a terse statement issued this morning, Apple (AAPL) said the litigation between IBM (IBM) and Mark Papermaster has been resolved. Come April 24, Papermaster will begin leading Apple’s iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams as SVP of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to CEO Steve Jobs. He will, however, have to certify in July and October that he has complied with legal obligations and not used confidential IBM information at Apple. From IBM’s own release on the matter:

IBM and Mr. Papermaster have now agreed on a resolution of the lawsuit under which Mr. Papermaster may not begin employment with Apple until April 24, 2009, six months after leaving IBM, and will remain subject thereafter to all of his contractual and other legal duties to IBM, including the obligation not to use or disclose IBM’s confidential information. Following commencement of his employment with Apple, Mr. Papermaster will be required to certify, in July 2009 and again in October 2009, that he has complied with his legal obligations not to use or disclose IBM’s confidential or proprietary information. The preliminary injunction will be replaced by a court order under which the Court will have continuing jurisdiction over this matter, including compliance enforcement powers, until October 24, 2009, one year after Mr. Papermaster’s departure from IBM.”

Google (GOOG) today unveiled a new tool that promises to measure Internet usage more precisely. Called AdPlanner, it combines search engine and audience measurement data to create a richer, more intelligent picture of Internet usage, one that may prove far more useful to advertisers looking to identify the best places to buy ads that will reach their target audiences. Slap it together with the recently announced Google Trends for Web Sites and what use is there for traditional advertising-research suppliers?

Great news for media buyers and advertisers who’ve long relied on comScore (SCOR) and Nielsen/Netratings and their shallow, inconsistent metrics. Ugly news for comScore and Nielsen/Netratings, which now seem destined to be disintermediated by Google in much the same way the company disintermediated the rest of the online advertising industry. Sadly, they’ve no one to blame for this but themselves. It’s not like they haven’t been hearing complaints about discrepancies in audience measurement for nearly a decade now (some, presumably, from Google itself).

“We in the marketing-media ecosystem have spent too many years trying to clean up the residue of flawed media-research methodologies,” Randall Rothenberg, president & CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau wrote in a scathing letter to comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings back in 2007. “We simply cannot let the Internet, the most accountable medium ever invented, fall into the same bad customs that have hindered older media and angered advertisers for decades–customs such as inadequate samples, accepted out of begrudging convenience; or phantom metrics, like ‘pass-along readers,’ that add shadowy bulk to audiences that cannot be measured directly; or metering technologies and processes that are easy to game.”

Under the terms of the deal, TNS will purchase Compete for $75 million in cash and another $75 million in performance-based earn-outs over the next two years.

Compete, which has long been overshadowed by metrics verterans like comScore and even newcomers like Quantcast, was overjoyed to be among the early acquisitions in the consolidation beginning in the Web-traffic analysis sector. After all, TNS might have bought Alexa. “Why are we excited about becoming part of the TNS family,” Compete execs wrote in a post to the company blog. “Because it means joining our click-stream data with TNS’s massive consumer panel operations, consumer research capabilities and ad-measurement databases on a global scale. Marrying online and offline consumer data with media spending and exposure is the holy grail of marketing. All of our marketer, agency and media partners will benefit from access to new consumer, brand and media research that will revolutionize how they plan and measure their performance. It’s a big, exciting vision that neither company could do on its own.”

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are not your typical billionaires. In fact, if you type billionaire into Google, the picture that emerges–fancy cars, private jets, mansions, jewels, supermodel girlfriends–isn’t anything you’d find in the lifestyle of the Google guys. Page drives a Prius, which costs around $21,000. Brin gets around for the most part on in-line skates, and he still lives in a rented apartment.”

–ABC News, 2004

With its onboard hammocks, full-size sofas and California King beds, it’s a wonder Google’s “party plane” has room for scientific instrumentation befitting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but apparently it does. Google and NASA’s Ames Research Center signed a unique deal last month that allows the agency to “regularly collect Earth atmospheric and terrestrial observations in support of science research and analysis” on some of its flights.

In exchange, Google gets to park its customized wide-body Boeing 767-200, as well as its two Gulfstream Vs, on Moffett Field–a NASA-managed airport that is generally closed to private aircraft–for $1.3 million a year. “It was an opportunity for us to defray some of the fixed costs we have to maintain the airfield as well as to have flights of opportunity for our science missions,” Steven Zornetzer, a NASA official, told the New York Times. “It seemed like a win-win situation.”

For Google, certainly, but not for local residents, who’ve long opposed commercial use of the federally owned airfield and who worry that the deal could open Moffett up to other private flights. “The Google flights represent the possibility that the camel’s nose is under the tent, and that NASA is looking at opening up the use of the runways to help pay for it,” said Lenny Siegel, director of the Pacific Studies Center. “The majority of the people in the community are against that. If they are doing science missions, that’s OK. If they are doing it just because they are rich and popular, it is not OK.”