Thursday, March 26, 2009
Black Thursday at Big Blue [UPDATED]
The ax is indeed swinging at Big Blue. Following reports that it is preparing to cut thousands of jobs in its global services unit, IBM said Thursday it has begun notifying employees of what it likes to euphemistically refer to as “resource actions.” IBM refused to disclose the number of employees affected, but
Lee Conrad, spokesman for a union group called Alliance@IBM, said at least 1,674 in the company’s Application Services unit will lose their jobs.
It’s taken far too long, but Sirius XM is coming to the iPhone. During a conference call to discuss the fourth-quarter results it posted last night, the satellite radio operator said we can expect an application that will stream its service to the iPhone and iPod touch to debut sometime in Q2.
In its second quarter, Oracle managed to hit Wall Street’s earnings targets despite the souring economy. Will it manage to do so again in its third? That’s not clear. But, by some accounts, the company’s third quarter is shaping up to be an ugly one–-the company’s worst since the early ’90s.
If no mention of layoffs was made during IBM’s reporting of its fourth-quarter results it’s not because the company hadn’t been planning them. IBM sent layoff notices to a number of employees last week–just one day after reporting a 12 percent gain in fourth-quarter earnings and issuing an encouraging financial outlook for 2009. And according to reports, the company is eliminating about 2,800 jobs in North America–mostly in its sales and software units.
Dell delivered its fiscal third-quarter results after market close Thursday, and they were about as exciting as the company’s industrial design. It reported a five percent drop in earnings thanks to what company officials euphemistically describe as “a challenging demand environment.”
Here’s a bit of happy news in these sad, sad times. Apple’s going to post a hell of a first quarter–“the mother of all earnings blowouts,” according to Andy Zaky over at Bullish Cross, whose track record in forecasting such things is quite a bit better than that of the experts. When Apple releases its first-quarter results in January, Zaky believes the company will report earnings of $1.96 per share on sales of $11.29 billion.
