Oracle's net income for the third quarter ended Feb. 28 rose 78 percent to US$2.1 billion over the same period last year, helped by strong software sales and an improving hardware business, the company said Thursday. Revenue for the quarter jumped 37 percent to $8.8 billion.

External controller-based disk storage has recovered from the global recession, exceeding the record sales figure from 2008 with revenue in 2010 of more than US$19.4 billion, according to research company Gartner.

The storage software market recorded its fifth successive quarter of year-on-year growth at the end of 2010 with all five of the top-ranked players increasing sales during the quarter, according to estimates published on Monday.

At the Cebit show on Tuesday SAP will show off an upcoming application called Sales OnDemand that could be a potential rival to the likes of Salesforce.com and Microsoft CRM Online.

Hewlett-Packard reported a jump in profit for the first quarter of its 2011 fiscal year but sales were dragged down by weakness in its PC and services divisions.

Lenovo, China's largest PC vendor, reported strong net profit growth in the third quarter as it increased market share in China and gauged brisk sales of laptops and smartphones.

Microsoft announced the availability Wednesday of Dynamics CRM 2011, the on-premises and partner-hosted version of its CRM (customer relationship management) software.

Dell on Tuesday reported a 177 percent year-over-year increase in net income for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2011, driven by growth in enterprise server and PC sales.

Some PC makers are halting sales of PCs with Sandy Bridge processors as they try to work out issues related to Intel's faulty chipset, companies said on Wednesday.

VMware's fourth-quarter revenue jumped 37 percent as businesses increased spending on its virtualization software, the company announced Monday.

Apple on Tuesday reported record revenue of US$26.74 billion for its first fiscal quarter, driven by sales of iPhones, Macs and iPads.

IBM said Tuesday that net income for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 rose 9 percent to US$5.3 billion year over year, helped by strong performance in growth markets as well as software and mainframe sales. Revenue for the quarter was $29 billion, a 7 percent increase.

Oracle's net income for the quarter ended Nov. 30 rose 28 percent from a year earlier to US$1.9 billion, buoyed by strong software license sales and an improving hardware business, the company said Thursday. Revenue was $8.6 billion, a jump of 47 percent.

Strong earnings from Dell and Salesforce.com, a positive report on online ad spending and two Internet IPOs this week highlighted underlying strength in the tech sector despite worries about the economy.

A former director of sales at HannStar Display of Taiwan has agreed to plead guilty and serve jail time for participating in a global conspiracy to fix the prices of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panels, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

While worldwide computer chip sales have been relatively strong so far during 2010, analysts warn that next year's sales totals could prove disappointing.

IBM said Monday that third-quarter net income rose 12 percent to US$3.6 billion, buoyed by strong performance in Brazil, Russia, India and China as well as solid sales of analytics software and services.

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday posted a net loss for the third quarter, but reported a boost in microprocessor and graphics products sales as it inches its way back to profitability.

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip and LCD panel maker, provided financial guidance for the third quarter on Thursday that showed its operating profit will fall from its all-time-high, but its sales will reach a new peak.

Worldwide server sales posted their biggest jump since 2003 during the second quarter as Hewlett-Packard outsold rival IBM to take the top spot among server vendors, IDC said Tuesday.