Gauna cut his fiscal Q2 estimate–that’s the March quarter–from $23 billion to $22 billion, in line with Apple’s forecast, while the Street consensus is still at $23 billion. His EPS estimate drops from $5.49 to $5.10.

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The year 2010, JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson asserted in a report this morning, “should be the year of the shakeout in smartphones.” He believes most of the market share and carrier focus will consolidate around three vendors. His view is that two of the winners “have effectively already been chosen.” In that group he includes Research In Motion (RIMM), “already a leader with its strong market presence” with a focus on the enterprise, and Apple (AAPL), driven by the App Store, iTunes and a strong Web browser.

So who will take the third slot?

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Following on a much-stronger-than-expected Q2 report last week, Intel, Gauna says, should continue to gain from better-than-expected results of its customers’ sales of notebook computers and server computers. Servers are benefitting form a shift to “cloud computing,” where more data processing is done via networks on a central computer, while notebooks may get a lift from Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 7, when it comes out on October 22.

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Earlier this month, Benchmark analyst Clayton Moran announced that he was seeing “softening online ad trends” and that “recent online activity indicates a further pull-back by large advertisers.” Per Eric Savitz at Tech Trader Daily, Moran cut his rating on Google (GOOG) in part because “large advertisers appear to reducing commitments heading into the summer…we are hearing that April and May were solid relative to expectations but indications for June through August are poor, thus tempering recent momentum.”

Now comes JMP Securities’ Sameet Sinha, also via Tech Trader, announcing that “budgets have declined as advertisers are not feeling as chipper anymore” and that “travel and finance continue to be weak, while retail is exhibiting mixed trends…the initial slivers of hope in May were premature.”

Unclear whether Moran and Sinha are talking about online ads across the board and whether they’re distinguishing between Google’s search ads and the display ads that Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner’s AOL (TWX) depend on.

For what it’s worth, my thoroughly undisciplined channel checks– whenever I talk to people who work at businesses that depend on Web ads, I ask them how sales are going–tell a more positive story. We’ll get a better idea in a month or so when the big public players start reporting Q2 numbers.

[Image credit: Filtran]

Well, JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens’s assessment of Oracle’s business these past few months was about as wrong as wrong can be, wasn’t it? In early March, Walravens predicted the company’s February quarter would be an abysmal one. “Our due diligence suggests that the February quarter was, in some respects, the worst Oracle has experienced in over 15 years,” he said. “The tone of the commentary from our industry sources regarding new license revenue is the worst we have ever heard.”

Two weeks later the company posts better-than-expected results for that quarter and announces a dividend–its first ever. So much for Walraven’s worst-quarter-in-15-years prediction.

So what did the analyst have to say for himself in light of Oracle’s report? “It surprised me in almost every way,” he told MarketWatch. “[It] doesn’t square with what you hear from people in the industry.”

Well, it certainly doesn’t square with what we were hearing from you, Patrick…

Well, JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens’s assessment of Oracle’s business these past few months was about as wrong as wrong can be, wasn’t it? In early March, Walravens predicted the company’s February quarter would be an abysmal one. “Our due diligence suggests that the February quarter was, in some respects, the worst Oracle has experienced in over 15 years,” he said. “The tone of the commentary from our industry sources regarding new license revenue is the worst we have ever heard.”

Two weeks later the company posts better-than-expected results for that quarter and announces a dividend–its first ever. So much for Walraven’s worst-quarter-in-15-years prediction.

So what did the analyst have to say for himself in light of Oracle’s report? “It surprised me in almost every way,” he told MarketWatch. “[It] doesn’t square with what you hear from people in the industry.”

Well, it certainly doesn’t square with what we were hearing from you, Patrick…

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. Said JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens, “Our due diligence suggests that the February quarter was, in some respects, the worst Oracle has experienced in over 15 years. The tone of the commentary from our industry sources regarding new license revenue is the worst we have ever heard.” And with that, Walravens cut his earnings estimate for Oracle’s fiscal year to $1.37 a share from $1.41 a share.

So companies aren’t clamoring to buy new database software in the worst economic crisis in 50 years. That’s not exactly a surprise. Nor is it surprising that Oracle’s business would suffer for it. That said, it may not be suffering as badly as Walravens claims. Certainly, there are other analysts who don’t quite share his grim view of the company’s prospects. Said Cowen Group analyst Peter Goldmacher, “Oracle is better positioned than its technology peers to weather the downturn given its broad technology solutions and its ability to manage margins.”

For the year through yesterday, Novatel shares had rallied 34.7 percent; Wilson notes that the wireless networking equipment company has gotten a boost from its role providing components to the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle 2 e-book reader. But Wilson says the Kindle 2 will contribute at most $10 million a quarter to Novatel’s revenue, “not enough to fill the hole left by the drop in demand in the PC and USB adapter business.” Novatel declined to talk about the Kindle on its post-earnings conference call last night, but did say that Foxconn, which manufactures the Kindle, was a 10 percent customer in Q4.

After the close yesterday, Novatel reported Q4 revenue of $65.1 million, slightly above the Street at $64.9 million, but down from $118 million a year ago. The company posted a non-GAAP loss of six cents a share, a penny worse than expected.

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Walravens today repeated his Market Outperform rating on the stock, but cut his price target to $15 from $18. He also cut his EPS estimate for the September 2009 fiscal year to 61 cents from 70 cents; for FY 2010 he goes to 83 cents, from 91 cents.

“While we continue to believe that Ariba’s software solutions should fare relatively well in this macroeconomic environment, the services business may not hold up as well as we had previously believed,” he writes. Walravens notes that the company had guided to December quarter services revenue of $32 million to $34 million; roughly 40 percent of that relates to systems implementation. He notes that product upgrades are discretionary “and could easily be delayed by cautious customers.”

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“Historically, Salesforce.com has not had an effective knowledge-base solution, giving RightNow a major advantage in business-to-consumer (B2C) sales cycles, which emphasize self-service,” writes Walravens.

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In a research note yesterday, JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson wrote that “sources suggested to us that at least one interest party has stepped forward to begin serious discussions with the company.” (He did not name any specific buyer.) Wilson contends that in the right hands, the networking equipment maker’s installed base, customers channel and intellectual property “could be worth considerably more than their current enterprise value.”

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