Today, Demand Media beat Wall Street expectations in its second-quarter earning, growing revenue and lessening losses.

The Santa Monica, Calif., online content maker also announced that it had re-upped and expanded its advertising partnership with Google and also bought two start-ups in social media and advertising.

Now, it’s time for the inevitable conference call to explain it all to Wall Street analysts and the media.

2:02 pm PT: The call starts off with an unusually jaunty CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who quickly got to the real deal: Exactly how badly did Google’s changes to its search algorithm, under a program code-named Panda, hurt Demand’s content business?

Not much, says Rosenblatt, who reels off a list of things the company has done to improve its offerings, which have been dinged by many as, well, spam.

Rosenblatt was not having any of that, talking about removing 300,000 pieces of crappy content and also “quality improvements” with partners such as cheerily demented cooking goddess Rachael Ray. She might cook with spam — here is a delightful Spam Hawaiian recipe — but she ain’t spam!

2:13 pm: Now it is on to the acquisition of IndieClick. Essentially: It’s for the young people.

Then, international. Latin America Demand editorial via eHow en español! (Actually, the acquisition of Emergincast.com, an Argentine start-up. Coming soon to a blog site near you: ¿Cómo se hierve el agua?

Last, social media. Demand will be doing a lot more of it, like everyone else in the world, including more recommendations. I would really like it if some Internet company said it was going anti-social.

2:18 pm: The finance guy comes on, covering everything already in the press releases. Which is why I am cutting out here and getting a gluten-free doughnut at the Whole Foods store where I am writing this post.

It is as delicious as you might imagine a gluten-free doughnut can be. Which is to say: Not very!

2:32 pm: Q&A time from the Wall Street dudes — and, let it be said, they are all dudes.

The first question is about the “cleansing” of its cruddy content and if it is all flushed out.

It might be baked-on sludge, but Rosenblatt assures that Demand has it all figured out.

Then, a query about international and how the company decides what to pick. Algo, of course! And local content writers.

Back to the spam content: Does the need to have better content mean less of it? Kind of, since there is a lot more video. But still a lot of content churning out of Demand!

A question about Facebook and how to program Demand content into it. Good lord, it’s hyper-poking!

“It’s not clear the best way of how you expand into all these properties,” said Rosenblatt, specifically referring to its acquisition today of both IndieClick and RSS Graffiti.

The next question is how successful Demand is in the display and brand business, and how IndieClick, a premium ad company aimed at niche blogs, will be integrated in.

More on social media advertising’s future. Aaaghh, this is as obvious as a store-bought-crust apple pie baked by Rachael Ray.

Rosenblatt notes that its flagship site, eHow, is but one means of distribution, but Demand content is going all over the place and winging by people when they least expect it.

“Social is more effective … to try to find stuff you didn’t know that you needed,” says Rosenblatt, who also would not dis search as a means of discovery.

That’s important, since Google is a major traffic driver and advertising partner, when it is not terrorizing Demand and others with its search algo version of Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor Snape.

And presto, here comes a question about Demand’s Google ad relationship, which Rosenblatt touts nicely.

Of course he does. It’s tastier than spam, after all.

After the markets close tomorrow, Demand Media will report its second-quarter earnings.

Wall Street is expecting a solid performance from the Santa Monica, Calif.-based online content maker compared to last year.

The consensus of estimates by analysts is for Demand to lose one cent a share, which is much smaller than the 55 cents a share loss from the same period a year ago. It is also an improvement on a previous loss of five cents a share for this quarter that investors had been predicting.

Nonetheless, the company’s stock hit its all-time low yesterday, after a strong IPO in January. Since the summer, it’s been all downhill, with Demand shares off 50.4 percent since early May.

Since it went public, the stock is off 63.1 percent.

Despite mostly strong results recently, public tech stocks were not spared the red ink that spilled all over yesterday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 5.5 percent.

The result of Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the federal government’s credit rating late Friday, the markets were in turmoil, as investors fled from stocks and presumably were busy stuffing gold doubloons under their mattresses.

Most tech stocks took it especially hard, even those — such as Google and Apple — whose recent financial results were stellar. That’s because investors are waiting for the next quarter shoe to drop with the unwelcome influence of the current economic crisis.

Thus, the carnage, even worse than last week:

Apple, down 5.5 percent today and 11 percent in the last five days.

Google, down 5.7 percent today and 10 percent in the last five days.

Microsoft, down 4.7 percent today and 10.2 percent in the last five days.

EBay, down 8 percent today and 18.4 percent in the last five days.

Amazon, down 4.4 percent today and 12.9 percent in the last five days.

Yahoo, down 5.5 percent today and 15.3 percent in the last five days. (Special note: Yahoo’s shares dove below $11 a share in after-hours trading, closing in on its late-2008 low of $9.39 and making it even tastier takeover bait.)

AOL, down 6.5 percent today and 11 percent in the last five days. (These are also historic lows for the Internet company, which reports its second-quarter earnings tomorrow.)

Demand Media, down 9.7 percent and 17.6 percent in the last five days. (The online content company will also be reporting its Q2 results tomorrow — Demand’s stock is off 63.1 percent since its January IPO.)

Pandora, down 7.6 percent today and 17.2 percent in the last five days.

And, worst of all, LinkedIn, down 17.4 percent today and 27.5 percent in the last five days.

Tanked, in fact, does not nearly describe it.

Today’s stock market rout hit tech stocks hard, with most declining as much as the broader indices.

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 4.3 percent and Nasdaq off 5.1 percent, shares of Google, Microsoft, AOL and Apple managed to stay in that range of losses.

Not so Yahoo and LinkedIn, whose shares were off 7.8 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively.

LinkedIn, the business networking site which reported its second-quarter earnings today, saw its shares seesaw down and up and down and then up again today.

While its results were in line with Wall Street expectations, the company also created some worry after it said profit margins are going to be cut in half for the next quarter.

Still, after its huge fall earlier today, in after-hours trading, LinkedIn has recovered a bit and is now up five percent.

But Yahoo has continued its increasingly troubling stock drop after the markets closed. Its shares are now dipping below $12, which gives the Silicon Valley Internet giant a very low $15.6 billion valuation.

The company’s stock has dropped 34 percent in the past three months, as worries over a range of issues — from its Asian assets to its display advertising business to its talent drain — continue to be a drag.

Here are the slide decks and other investor materials from Nokia’s incredibly bad second quarter results announced earlier today.

The Finnish cellphone maker saw net sales in its core devices and services business decline 23 percent from last quarter and 20 percent from a year earlier. Meanwhile, revenue and unit sales for its critical smartphones were down more than 30 percent from both prior quarter and year-ago results.

Earlier this week, Silicon Valley Internet giant Yahoo turned in a weak quarter too, but its depressing charts pale in comparison to this set of Nokia financial data.

In fact, if the charts below had any more minuses, it would start to look like a crime scene for an unfortunate knifing victim on “Law and Order” — whose famous “doink-doink” sound is also below.

Here’s the damage to peruse:

Request-Q2_2011_results_presentation

2Q_2011_ENG

Nokia_results2011Q2e

Yahoo — which turned in yet another disappointing second quarter on Tuesday, but with all new excuses for the continuing decline in revenue — is now getting toasted by Wall Street.

That would be the marshmallow — and not the champagne — kind.

The stock of the Internet giant dropped below $14 a share, to close at $13.48 yesterday, after the company said its display advertising business in the U.S. was hard hit.

Today, it’s already down even further.

That’s close to an eight percent haircut for the past two days and a decline of 20 percent for the past three months.

In that same three months, Google is up over 13 percent, Microsoft is up over five percent, Amazon is up over 17 percent and Apple is up 13 percent.

You get the general idea here.

The decline means Yahoo’s market value is now only $17.5 billion, and more than two-thirds of that value is accounted for by its Asian assets (more than $9 billion) and cash ($3.3 billion).

That means its other properties are worth just above $5 billion now.

And while CEO Carol Bartz tried again — in a conference call with analysts after the earnings were released — to portray the situation as another part of her never-ending turnaround of the company, the issues at Yahoo are not new.

They range from display weakness to search declines to a talent drain to ineffective marketing to the lack of a consistent and fast-developing pipeline of innovative products to its flaccid board.

The earnings mess — no surprise, given estimates going forward were also missed — was seized on by investors and the press. (See, it’s not only me!)

In a column earlier this week in Forbes, titled “Carol Bartz’s 8 Blind Spots That Sunk Yahoo,” longtime and noisy Yahoo critic Eric Jackson noted:

“[T]he Bartz hiring is a cautionary tale to all boards and investors: An over-confident ex-CEO with no industry experience can make a bad company worse before things get better.”

But perhaps more damaging was a post today in The Wall Street Journal’s Heard It on the Street column by Martin Peers, titled: “Yahoo’s Unsurprising Surprise.”

It began with the cutting line: “Talk about having a credibility gap on display.”

Then it got worse:

“Admittedly, it may be that Yahoo has dropped off the radar screens of so many investors that this latest episode can’t do further damage. Certainly, aside from cutting costs, Ms. Bartz’s turnaround plan for Yahoo remains stillborn.”

That might be too kind if the stock continues to decline, a development that — in turn — might once again begin the speculation of Yahoo as a takeover target.

Which, if that could manage to get Yahoo shares back up, might be a reason to break out the bubbly.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment, which — given stock prices are what they are — is probably a good idea.

Here are the slides Yahoo released about its second quarter earnings, in which revenue was down due to an unexpected drop in growth in its display advertising business, especially in the critical U.S. market.

As you can see on Page 8 of the deck, year-over-year display sales rose only five percent in the quarter, compared to much more significant increases in previous quarters. With declines in all other revenue sectors, this was not a good thing.

The 10 percent decline in the Americas region, which you can see on Page 9, is the culprit, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz underlined in the conference call with Wall Street analysts today.

Paging Ross Levinsohn — leader of Yahoo’s Americas region and its ad efforts — stat!

YHOO_Q2_11EarningsPresentation_Final

Yahoo turned in another weak performance in the second quarter, with yet another decline in revenue.

This time it was five percent, compared to last quarter’s six percent. In other words, at least things are looking up as they go down!

While earnings per share rose smartly, Wall Street is still looking for strong sales growth from the Silicon Valley Internet giant, which seems unable to provide it.

Blamed most this time for the revenue fall: Yahoo’s changes in its display sales operations in the key Americas region, reasons for which were largely unspecified in the initial company press release. (You can see the damage in this slide deck from the company here.)

Maybe Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will explain it all in its upcoming conference call with analysts (or she could try the I-don’t-know approach taken by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch in PhoneGate hearings in Britain earlier today!).

2 pm PT: It starts with the usual regulatory blah-blah, which I always enjoy.

Bartz gets right into it, opening with the key problems with China’s Alibaba Group, as well as its display and search revenue weaknesses.

The fight with Alibaba is over its Alipay payments unit, which was spun out of the Chinese company without Yahoo’s say-so. Yahoo is a big shareholder.

Bartz says that the company was working on a settlement night and day.

But she quickly gets onto how display did not perform as expected in its key Americas arena. “Obviously, I am not happy,” she said.

Obvi! Neither are shareholders, Carol.

She says it was not about new competitive development. It was not about the economy. It was not about engagement.

So what was it? Changes in its sales leadership and organization, says Bartz, which has included talent walking out the door in droves.

A lot more than Yahoo expected, but no surprise to anyone who has been paying any attention to the brain drain at the company.

Bartz promises a new approach to sales, part of its endless turnaround, which is beginning to feel like a digital version of “Waiting for Godot.”

Search revenue, though, says Bartz, was better than expected.

2:11 pm: CFO Tim Morse is on now, running through the numbers and the display shortfall in the Americas region.

“We simply did not have appropriate coverage,” says Morse, noting consumer products, tech and autos as weak spots in the advertising market.

Thank goodness, then, for the guarantees from search revenue in the Microsoft partnership deal.

More numbers and then it is back to Bartz to talk about search, which is going better than the last quarter, when it was the culprit for the revenue decline.

She says that Microsoft and Yahoo were working together to improve the issues.

“We’d like to be further down the road,” says Bartz about the goal of search revenue per search growth, as well as settling all the other problems, such as the Asian issues.

And, by further, I am presuming she means actual forward movement, which is what roads are actually for.

2:27 pm: Q&A time, the part of our program where Wall Street analysts do not ask the questions that need asking (and where I win fancy journalism awards for pointing this delta out!).

Therefore, Bartz is first thanked for providing “color” about the display disaster and is not asked about more specifics of the disaster itself.

The second question still does not get to it either, but she does note Yahoo’s sales force has to sell beyond “Gee, we’re big” and come up with better ad solutions.

“The issue is we did not have enough sales people in front of the big clients,” says Bartz.

That’s because all those former Yahoos are now working at Groupon, LivingSocial, Facebook and on down the line and now in front of big clients for those hotter companies.

2:34 pm: Question about its Asian assets. Yahoo’s talks with Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba are separate, says Bartz, although I would add that they have non-movement in common.

And also a question about Yahoo’s interest in the acquisition of the Hulu premium online video service.

Bartz winks verbally and says nothing, which translates into: Of course, it is interested.

More on the reasons for the display fall-off, which Bartz makes clear is not due to big competitive threats, but internal issues.

Maybe she’s saving big competitive threats as the reason for a revenue decline in the third quarter!

I look forward to the quarter I get the finger pointed at me for causing revenue to fall, due to my snarky posts.

Now, we are into softball questions about improvements in engagement. It’s up, but no one asks why Yahoo is still not doing anything very cutting edge in product innovation compared to competitors.

I believe Google has launched at least 14 new social networks since this Sunday, along with its strong quarterly performance last week. And Apple, well, blew away its quarter today as it is about to release more cool new stuff later this week.

And that might be the crux of the issue for Yahoo, which might not solve its woes by throwing a more focused sales army at the issue.

That’s because Yahoo’s products are simply not nearly has social as Facebook or even Google right now, which might be the true problem as old customers move on to new advertising solutions.

Whatever the reason, Yahoo clearly needs a refresh of its ad products and how it sells them, especially in its fast-growing mobile, video and communications products.

Bartz talks about getting better expertise, a tighter regional focus and other issues of going to market, which is perhaps something she might have realized many, many quarters ago.

After all, she’s been in charge for a while, and these issues are not new.

In fact, in an earlier quarter, Bartz was stressing “tentpole” events and anchor media properties and the power of the size of Yahoo as a selling point.

This was in April, in fact, in the first quarter of this year.

As I wrote then:

“CEO Carol Bartz excited was the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s traffic gusher for big tentpole events such as the Super Bowl and the Oscars. In fact, Bartz practically sounded like a gushy “Entertainment Tonight” flunky when talking to Wall Street analysts about Yahoo’s Oscar news, games and other offerings. She proudly noted the site’s efforts generated more than a billion pages views.”

Now big is out! Moving on!

The last question is another about Yahoo’s talks with its Asian partners.

“It’s complex,” says Bartz.

You can say that again.

Yahoo turned in another flat performance in the second quarter, with $1.08 billion in revenue, which was slightly below Wall Street expectations.

Earnings per share were right on target, though, at 18 cents each, an increase of 18 percent. Net income was $237 million for the quarter.

Investors were expecting Yahoo to report revenue of $1.11 billion on earnings of 18 cents.

That means a revenue decline of five percent from a year ago, which Yahoo said was “primarily due to the revenue share related to the Search Agreement with Microsoft.”

More importantly, in a statement, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz also pointed to changes in its display sales operations, a key business of Yahoo:

“We experienced softness in display revenue in the second half of the quarter due to comprehensive changes we have made in our sales organization to position ourselves for more rapid display growth in the future.”

Whatever the reason, it’s not good news for Yahoo, especially considering Google’s strong results last week. Then again, it’s better than the first quarter’s six percent drop in revenue for Yahoo.

That said, Yahoo stock was down between one and two percent in after-hours trading.

Here’s the full press release to peruse, before I begin liveblogging the earnings call at 2 pm PT, as well as a link to my post on its slide deck of the results:

YHOO_Q211PressRelease_Final

Tomorrow, Yahoo will announce its second-quarter earnings and, once again, Wall Street is expecting yet another meh performance from the Internet giant.

In his “cheat sheet” report, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney’s take is pretty typical of the sentiment of investors weary of waiting for a rebound in Yahoo’s growth.

“From $15, we believe YHOO shares have upwards bias,” wrote Mahaney, “but we don’t have real conviction.”

That’s become the unfortunate norm for Yahoo, whose management has continued to struggle with a variety of issues, from its ongoing talent drain to an unexpected and still unresolved fight with its main partner in China to the troubles in its search partnership with Microsoft to the overall lack of ability to turbocharge its advertising and other businesses as has been long promised.

While it is certainly not for lack of trying, the prospect of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz wheeling out another series of excuses for the lack of turnaround and — something many have been looking for most of all — a clearer strategic vision for the company on the earnings call on Tuesday, will surely not produce a dulcet impact on its depressed shares.

The stock has continued to dip well below $15 a share, down almost six percent last week and 13 percent for the last six months.

That’s why some think that Yahoo’s interest in bidding for the Hulu premium video service, which is being sold by its media giant owners, might be just the bold and risky move to get the company centered around.

With the online video ad business growing and the need for Yahoo to focus its many ambitions, some think Hulu could be a key piece in becoming the “premier digital media company” that the Internet giant has recently taken to calling itself.

By doubling down on what Hulu represents — that would be the premium online video business — it’s a fast-growing category Yahoo’s large sales force would be well-suited for.

In addition, a purchase of Hulu could give Yahoo some much-needed talent in the arena, including its CEO Jason Kilar and others.

“Of all the buyers, Yahoo is the most in need of a purchase to change its paradigm,” said one observer. “If it could not pay too much, Hulu would give Yahoo some differentiating that it really needs.”

Of course, paying too much for Hulu is a key consideration mentioned by all who are looking at it, including Google, AT&T, Amazon and others.

How to determine the value of Hulu’s content licenses, both now and later — given that once those rights expire whoever owns Hulu will eventually have to compete in acquiring the often high-priced material from Hollywood — is the biggest question they are asking.

Is that worth $1 billion or $2 billion? Can a new owner keep up the momentum needed to successfully maintain the Hulu business well after those content rights expire? And, of course, which company would be best suited to accomplish this task?

Yahoo certainly has all the potential to be at the front of that line, despite being managed erratically for far too long. But — also as usual — there is the endless debate internally over whether buying it will fix problems.

Whatever happens, most agree that something dramatic needs to happen at Yahoo, rather than the continual story of flatness that has been coming out of the company for far too long.

And we’ll all see if that’s improved after the close of the market tomorrow, when Wall Street is expecting Yahoo to report revenue of $1.11 billion on earnings of 18 cents.

That’s a revenue decline of two percent, which is not great, especially considering Google’s strong performance last week. Then again, it’s better than the first quarter’s six percent drop in revenue for Yahoo.

Like I said: Meh.

“There are clearly some gems upon we will build Nokia’s strategy,” Elop said. At the same time, he said the company must move faster than it has if it hopes to regain lost ground. In particular, Elop said the company must have a better strategy around operating systems.

“The game has changed from battle of devices to war of ecosystems,” Elop said, adding later that “Our industry has changed and we have to change faster.”

Elop hinted at a change in the company’s strategy for the high end, which has focused on the Symbian operating system with a planned shift to the mobile Linux-based MeeGo operating system. He didn’t give specifics, but did draw a distinction between the low and high ends of the markets, suggesting a dual-OS strategy may still be the plan.

At the high end, he talked about the importance of developers and services, while at the low end, he said, the key characteristics are brand, scale, price, distribution and speed. Elop also noted that because of different chipsets, it doesn’t always make sense to serve the lower end of the market with the same operating system as is used for top-end smartphones.

Although Elop didn’t name any names, he did talk about the need for the company to “build or join a competitive ecosystem,” suggesting that it might be open to shifting to a competing platform. And while he wouldn’t confirm such a move, he said that the company could pull off such a switch because of its strong brand and relationship with operators.

Among the possibilities that have been suggested are Android and Windows Phone 7. The company has also canceled or delayed plans for two U.S. smartphones, suggesting that a change may be afoot.

“We made a decision to not proceed as people thought we would proceed,” Elop said.

It has also suffered delays of its E7 smartphone, which was to ship last quarter and now isn’t expected to contribute meaningfully to the bottom line until the second quarter.

The new strategy, Elop said, must be one that can “re-open doors” in markets such as the United States, where the company is weak.

“Clearly there is a pattern of disappointments in the United States,” Elop said.

Earlier in the day, Nokia reported that December quarter profits fell 20 percent as the company “faced significant challenges” and lower margins.

The Motorola Xoom packs a 16-by-10 aspect ratio, a dual-core processor, 1080p playback and Flash support, and will run on Verizon’s network. Initially, the tablet will run on Verizon’s 3G network, but Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha said the Xoom that goes on sale in the first quarter of this year will be upgradeable to 4G by the end of the second quarter.

“The software is not completely done,” Jha said, adding that the hardware isn’t either.

Google Android boss Andy Rubin had briefly showed a prototype Motorola tablet at last month’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference and said that Honeycomb was being designed expressly with tablets in mind.

The Xoom, Wi-Fi Samsung Tab and G-Slate are in addition to the Toshiba, Asus and Vizio tablets announced earlier in the week.

Nearly all of these tablets are running some flavor of Android, though a handful of Windows 7 tablets are also being shown in Las Vegas.

However, the scene in Vegas offers a somewhat skewed view of the tablet market. Outside Sin City, the iPad is still the dominant player, while a number of tablet competitors expected soon have opted not to launch here. HP is having an event next month to focus on future webOS devices, while Research In Motion has said it will launch its PlayBook before the end of March.

Motorola also used some of its afternoon event to show off the Motorola Atrix 4G, a smartphone introduced at an AT&T event earlier in the day. It packs a fingerprint reader, a dual-core 1GHz processor, and the ability to dock to an 11-inch screen and keyboard to act as a mini-laptop, with eight hours of battery life.

When docked, the phone can power a full desktop version of Mozilla, including full Flash support, allowing for a PC-like experience all powered by the smartphone. AT&T Senior Vice President Jeff Bradley said it is too soon to say how much the device will cost, but promised the price will be competitive. Although AT&T has the U.S. exclusive on the Atrix, Motorola said it will be offered through Bell Canada and Orange UK.

In addition to the Atrix and Tablet, Motorola announced its first phone to run on faster LTE networks–the dual-core Droid Bionic, which is slated to arrive early in the second quarter on Verizon Wireless. Motorola also introduced the Cliq 2, an update to Motorola’s first Motoblur phone for T-Mobile.

Update 5:45 pm PT: As for timing, I confirmed that the Motorola Xoom is indeed the “lead device” for Honeycomb and will be the first on the market when it ships later this quarter. The LG model is slated to ship “in the coming months,” and other Honeycomb tablets will follow.

Google isn’t sharing a lot of new details on Honeycomb, but Rubin did make a short blog post and upload this YouTube video, which touts Google Talk video chatting, a specially designed YouTube App and access to Google Books.

“Many of Android’s existing features will really shine on Honeycomb: refined multi-tasking, elegant notifications, access to over 100,000 apps on Android Market, home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive,” Rubin said in the blog post. “We’ve also made some powerful upgrades to the web browser, including tabbed browsing, form auto-fill, syncing with your Google Chrome bookmarks, and incognito mode for private browsing.”

.

Analysts had been expecting the company to report earnings of 50 cents a share, on revenue of $11 billion, according to a consensus survey by Thomson Reuters. Intel (INTC) turned in third quarter earnings of 52 cents a share on revenue of $11.1 billion. The company said it sees fourth-quarter sales hitting $11.1 billion, plus or minus $400 million. Consensus forecast for the period is $11.32 billion.

Evidently, the “weaker than expected demand for consumer PCs in mature markets” that CEO Paul Otellini warned of last month isn’t quite as weak as he’d thought. Certainly, in today’s earnings release, he sounded quite a bit more optimistic. “These results were driven by solid demand from corporate customers, sales of our leadership products and continued growth in emerging markets,” he said. “Looking forward, we continue to see healthy worldwide demand for computing products of all types…”

Lazaridis described the device as “the first professional tablet,” able to access the “full Web” (the fashionable euphemism for supporting Adobe’s Flash). The PlayBook will be able to display content from a paired BlackBerry smartphone, and, in a departure for RIM, will be “an amazing gaming platform,” Lazaridis said. Leaving no superlative unturned, he said, “This will enable a new world of computing that you can hold in the palm of your hand.”

Thankfully, he stopped short of calling it “magical and revolutionary.”

The PlayBook has no cellular connection of its own, though it can connect to wireless networks through a paired BlackBerry. There are plans for 3G and 4G versions of the device, though RIM volunteered little in the way of a time line for them–“some point in the future” was as close as Lazaridis got to a hard and fast date.

Interestingly, PlayBook doesn’t use RIM’s new BlackBerry 6 OS. Instead, it’s built on a new platform created by QNX, which RIM (RIMM) acquired earlier this year.

Here are the specs:

• 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• 1 GB RAM
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)

Say what you will about RIM following the puck again, that’s an impressive list. In spec, PlayBook looks quite promising, certainly more so than the other iPad rivals we’ve seen to date. And RIM’s leadership clearly has high hopes for it.

“We are bringing mobility to the Web, not asking the Web to reformat for mobility,” RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie told Reuters. “I can’t think of anything more architecturally game-changing that we’ve done, other than the launch of the original BlackBerry.”

The PlayBook is expected to arrive at market in the U.S. in early 2011 and abroad in the second quarter. No word yet on pricing (or a few other details, like battery life).

After announcing its second-quarter earnings this afternoon after the markets closed, Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz and CFO Tim Morse held the usual conference call.

The results: Net income and margins were up at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, while revenue was meh. Display advertising growth was up, while search ad revenue was down.

Revenue and worries about future direction turned out to be the questions of the day.

2:03 pm PT: While she touted the improved margins with a confident tone, a nice accomplishment, Bartz quickly pointed out the obvious on revenue weakness.

She blamed a combo of issues, such as not monetizing search-share improvements.

“How do we measure our business?” asked Bartz, in her financial soliloquy. Another laundry list of stuff, such as engagement, editorial expertise and scale.

Then it was off to the races with updates on Yahoo’s social, local, video and mobile improvements.

That would be things such as integration with social networking powerhouse Facebook and online gaming phenom Zynga, more video all over the site and other initiatives to spur consumer engagement.

Bartz’s faves are the “Bikini 101″ videos, she said, which apparently get you ready for the summer season.

BoomTown last wore a bikini in 1974.

2:12 pm PT: Morse came on and started going over the numbers.

Yay on costs and margins. Not-so-yay on revenue growth.

You get the picture. Morse had some excuses, all of which seemed reasonable, including a pullback of advertisers in July.

More numbers on the savings from the Microsoft (MSFT) search and advertising alliance, tax issues, guidance, cash status and more.

I like listening to Morse, who always sounds super-competent. But he completely bores my assistant, Ed, just like other CFOs he is subjected to in earnings season, since I blast these calls on my computer’s speakers.

Sorry, Tim!

2:27 pm PT: Bartz was back and talking about display advertising and how Yahoo is working on all kinds of new schemes to improve advertiser experience, as well as to engage consumers more.

Onto search, which has long been Yahoo’s Achilles heel, no matter how Bartz spins it. Revenue per search is down and has been, which is a problem.

“As for search, we remain focused on growing our search business,” she said firmly. We’ll see about that after a year into the deal with Microsoft.

She touched on the controversy around contextual search being counted on comScore (SCOR) and dismissed it–although we will see how that turns out!

Then Bartz gave an update on the Microsoft alliance transition. Nothing new here, and the hope is that it will begin to take place by the end of the year, but only if it can be done with “quality.”

Bartz then touted Yahoo’s performance related to delivering information on the World Cup soccer, which she should as the company’s media arm did a bang-up job.

More on improvements in development and innovation, although it was a little light on deep examples.

Bartz summed up by again mentioning margin improvements, which was a good idea, and then moved onto Q&A.

2:38 pm PT: First question is about revenue lag, natch.

Bartz noted that customers’ marketing budgets are “easy to turn on and off.” The perils of the ad market! But, she said, she felt it was more of an overall market issues, rather than Yahoo-specific.

The next question was about page-view decline. Are these Wall Street analysts actually doing their job?

Morse answered that page views might not be all that anymore, since consumer use of Web technologies has changed.

“What we are trying to do is move toward a more holistic view,” he said.

But he admitted, “It is honestly a bit of a surprise.” Say what?!?

The next question was more on display advertising revenue drop-off and inquired about whether it impacted search.

Bartz said she thought it was because of those nagging on-off switches marketers can use!

The next question was about revenue pick-up on bucket tests of new system with Microsoft and, again, more on where the weakness in revenue is located.

“I will tell you we are pleased with it,” said Bartz coyly about the Microsoft test results.

As to revenue slowdown: No specific category and it was those big knob-turning customers.

More on cost-cutting and advertising revenue, which were essentially the same question over and over.

It is the right question, too.

At one point, Bartz talked about redefining advertiser expectations and how targeting was a better way to get to consumers.

Actually, it is pretty much about that old sales mantra of ABC: Always Be Closing!

More shuffling the papers about what was going on and what was coming next. Bartz noted that consumer confidence is “really weird now.”

Then there was a question about this “science, art and scale” motto that Yahoo has been using and calling SAS for short (internally, many move the letters around to make a naughty word).

The larger point, said Bartz, was that Yahoo is one of the new places that can deliver big results to advertisers in an unusual and engaging way.

True enough, which begs the question again: So what’s with these weak revenues? And, of course, what is Bartz going to do about it?

Here are Yahoo’s slides from its second-quarter earnings announcement today for you to peruse and enjoy.

Pretend you are a Wall Street analyst–you’re probably smarter–and sharpen your pencils!

A cheat sheet to start: Net income and margins were up at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, while revenue was meh. Display advertising growth was up, while search ad revenue was down.

(And here is a live blog of the management conference call about the results.)

Courtesy of Yahoo (YHOO):

YHOO_Q210EarningsPresentationFinal

Yahoo said it had earned 15 cents a share in net income–a rise of 53 percent compared to last year-in its second-quarters earnings today, after the markets closed, on an only slight rise in revenue.

Wall Street had expected the Internet giant to earn 14 cents a share in the three months.

But gross revenue at the Silicon Valley Internet giant rose only two percent, And minus costs associated with traffic acquisition–called non-GAAP revenue–revenue was only $1.128 billion compared to $1.136 billion a year ago.

Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz has been touting improved margins and stronger operating income over longer-term worries about lack of innovative vision.

But the lack of revenue growth is the real issue.

Most encouraging: Display advertising, Yahoo’s core business, grew 19 percent from a year ago.

But revenue from owned-and-operated search declined yet again, although less dramatically, down eight percent year-over-year.

Page views were also down four percent, according to Yahoo, while employee numbers rose eight percent.

Here’s the full press release (and click here to see Yahoo’s slides on the earnings and here to read the liveblog of the management call on the results):

YHOO_Q210PressRelease_Final

Suddenly–although not entirely unexpectedly–the major investors of Yahoo are getting restless.

If you talked to many of them in recent weeks, there has developed a confusion over the stock sitting stagnant in the mid-teens for far too long now, a vague disgruntlement that CEO Carol Bartz has not provided enough of a vision and innovation in her 18 months in charge to turn around the iconic but long-struggling Internet giant, a nagging worry about the continuing exodus of top execs and, perhaps most of all, vexation that Yahoo (YHOO) is just too big not to be, well, bigger than it is.

“It just feels like there is nothing going on to get any momentum going,” said one major shareholder, whose sentiment is more common than not among longtime stock owners of Yahoo. “And it is not clear if there is anything on the horizon to get it going.”

Many point to the value of Yahoo’s Asian holdings, especially its stake in China’s Alibaba Group, as its most promising set of assets, valuing them much more than management’s recent attempts to focus on its media properties while shedding search technology costs under its ongoing partnership with Microsoft (MSFT).

“A Yahoo shareholder has to have the patience of Job,” said another major stock owner, noting shares of the Silicon Valley company are down more than 10 percent compared to a year ago, in contrast to an 8.3 percent rise at Google (GOOG) and a 3.9 percent increase at Microsoft.

To be fair, for the year to date, all Yahoo shares have declined less than those of either of those two digital giants.

And analysts are expecting some sunshine from today’s second-quarter earnings results, which will be reported after the markets close.

The company is expected to report a strong gain in profits, even with revenues rising only slightly.

The consensus: Yahoo will earn 14 cents a share for the three months ended in June, on $1.16 billion in revenue. That compares to 10 cents on $1.14 billion in the same period a year ago.

Several analysts are raising their ratings on Yahoo, noting that Bartz’s efforts to cut costs and improve margins have not been fully appreciated by investors.

Reaction to Yahoo’s results will be interesting. Google’s earnings report earlier this week disappointed Wall Street, since its profit was less than expected, although U.S. revenue growth was promising.

“In particular, we believe that the robust and accelerating Google U.S. revenue results, based on both Search and Display growth, provide a broad positive market read-thru for Yahoo!,” wrote Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney in his “cheat sheet” note ahead of earnings.

Mahaney reiterated his $22-a-share price target, pointing to display advertising recovery, margin expansion, search share stabilization, Yahoo’s recent stock buyback authorization and the eventual value of the Asian assets.

Yahoo shares closed yesterday at $15.10.

Evidently, pulling ahead of Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM) is proving quite a bit more difficult than Simonson or Nokia (NOK) imagined. This morning, the company slashed its second-quarter financial guidance, and among the reasons cited: The beating Nokia is taking in the smartphone market.

“Multiple factors are negatively impacting Nokia’s business to a greater extent than previously expected,” the company said in a statement. “These factors include: The competitive environment, particularly at the high-end of the market, and shifts in product mix towards somewhat lower gross margin products. In addition, the recent depreciation of the euro affects Nokia’s cost of goods sold, operating expenses and global pricing tactics.”

So when Nokia reports second-quarter earnings on July 22, expect handset revenue and margins to be “at the lower end of or slightly below” the range of its previous forecasts. And expect the same of the company’s mobile device value share for the year.

An ugly admission for Nokia, but with smartphone designs like that of the new X5 (pictured above, further details here), hardly a surprising one.

When Hewlett-Packard last reported earnings, it surprised Wall Street with a 25 percent spike in profit and raised its guidance for the year, citing “accelerating momentum” in enterprise IT spending, evidently for very good reason.

Posting fiscal second-quarter results after Tuesday’s closing bell, HP (HPQ) said it earned $1.09 a share on revenue that rose to $30.8 billion, from $27.4 billion in the same quarter the previous year.

That’s significantly better that the $1.05 a share on revenue of $29.8 billion that analysts had been expecting. Driving growth: Strong sales in most of HP’s key product segments: PCs, printers and data center equipment.

In a statement, HP CEO Mark Hurd touted the company’s third straight quarter of profit growth: “HP had an exceptional quarter with strong performance across every region,” he said, adding that he is “confident in the enormous opportunity that lies ahead.”

For the current quarter, the company expects a profit of $1.05 to $1.07 a share, in line with forecasts.

Shares in the eBay (EBAY) slid seven percent Wednesday after the company said it expects profit of between 37 cents and 39 cents a share in the current quarter–short of the 40 cents a share the Street was expecting.

And a disappointing full-year outlook didn’t help matters. As BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis observed, “The expectations for a monster quarter are not materializing.”

Still, the company did beat the Street in its latest quarter, reporting earnings of 42 cents per share on revenue of $2.196 billion. Analysts had anticipated 41 cents a share on $2.18 billion.

After Apple turned in stellar second-quarter earnings yesterday, its shares surged above $260 in after-hours trading and then fell back down to close at $244.59.

What’s next is anyone’s guess, including Wall Street’s.

So it will be interesting to see where the stock opens today, especially as there seem to be more innovations en route from Apple (AAPL), as suggested by the unscrupulously obtained news about a handsome new iPhone coming soon.

In any case, the computer giant continues to flirt with the possibility of reaching the market cap of Microsoft (MSFT). Apple’s valuation is now at $222 billion, while Microsoft is at $275 billion.

Until this happens or doesn’t, let’s enjoy a video of the incomparable Billie Holiday singing, “How Deep Is the Ocean (How High Is the Sky)”:

Apple’s first quarter was a blowout, as was the one before it. So too is the company’s latest. Reporting second-quarter earnings after the bell Tuesday, Apple rolled out the big numbers once again. The company posted a profit of $3.07 billion on revenue that rose 49 percent to $13.5 billion. Earnings per share were $3.33, far more than the $2.45 per share analysts had been expecting.

Apple (AAPL) said it sold 8.75 million iPhones for the quarter, up more than 131 percent from the year prior; 2.94 million Macs, up 33 percent; and nearly 10.9 million iPods, down one percent. Strong numbers, all. Even iPod sales beat the Street’s consensus of nine million units shipped.

“We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent,” CEO Steve Jobs said in another variation of the statement the company has sent out so many times before. “We’ve launched our revolutionary new iPad and users are loving it, and we have several more extraordinary products in the pipeline for this year.”

At $261.36, Apple shares are up nearly seven percent in after-hours trading.

Apple’s earnings release below as well as notes from the earnings call.

Notes From the Call

• During introductory remarks, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer pointed out that sales of Macs outpaced those of PCs. According to IDC, PC sales grew 24 percent during March quarter. Mac sales rose 33 percent.
• iPod touch sales grew 63 percent year-over-year. Apple controls over 70 percent of the U.S. market for digital media players.
• Apple’s iTunes Store generated $1.1 billion in sales (music, video and apps). Some four billion apps have been downloaded to date. There are currently 3,500 apps for iPad.
• Retail store revenue was $1.68 billion, a 22 percent increase. The company sold 606,000 Macs through its retail outlets, an increase of 38 percent. Half of those were sold were to customers who never owned a Mac before. Apple plans to open 40 to 50 new stores in fiscal 2010.
• Didn’t quite catch it, but there was some mention of a “future product transition.” Not sure what this refers to, but certainly interesting.
• This was the best quarter ever for iPhone sales–131 percent year-over-year growth. That’s three times the growth IDC has estimated for the smartphone market as a whole.
• Are folks who would have bought Macs now buying iPads instead? Apple COO Tim Cook said the company hasn’t seen any Mac cannibalization yet. He also said it’s far too early to tell which version of the device–Wi-Fi-only or Wi-Fi plus 3G–is selling better.
• iPhone units shipped in the Asia-Pacific region were up year-over-year more than nine times, Cook said. “Through the first half of the fiscal year, our revenue from greater China was over 1.13 billion,” he added. “That’s up over 200 percent year-over-year.”
• On iAds: “We’re just putting our toes in the water, so don’t expect much from us this calendar year.”
• Remarking on the company’s iPhone exclusivity agreements, Cook said that in those markets where Apple has moved from exclusive to nonexclusive, it has seen its unit share and market share improve. No comment on whether or not the company will end iPhone exclusivity in the U.S.
• Cook: “We think the market size for the iPad is very large.”
• Asked about the delayed international launch of the iPad, Cook said there isn’t “a production problem per se…but the level of demand has shocked us, at least initially.”
• Apple is still happy with AT&T (T) and its network? AT&T has made “big strides,” he noted, adding that “we look forward to continued improvement.”
• Cook on Apple TV: “It’s still a hobby for us.”
• Cook on iPad versus netbook: “I can’t think of a single thing the netbook does well….To me it’s a no-brainer that someone would buy an iPad over a netbook.
• Are consumers buying different kinds of apps for the iPad than for the iPhone? Too early to tell, though app sales and book sales are both quite strong.
• Question about the “extraordinary products” Apple mentioned in its earnings release. No comment. “We’re not going to help our competitors by answering that,” said Oppenheimer.

Apple Reports Second Quarter Results
Record March Quarter Revenue and Profit
iPhone Sales More Than Double
CUPERTINO, California—April 20, 2010—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 second quarter ended March 27, 2010. The Company posted revenue of $13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $9.08 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.62 billion, or $1.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent, up from 39.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 2.94 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.75 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 131 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 10.89 million iPods during the quarter, representing a one percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve launched our revolutionary new iPad and users are loving it, and we have several more extraordinary products in the pipeline for this year.”

“Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue in the range of about $13.0 billion to $13.4 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $2.28 to $2.39,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.

Analysts had been expecting $1.06 a share on $30 billion in revenue.

All in all, a strong quarter. PC shipments grew 26 percent year-over year. Server revenue rose 11 percent. And Personal Systems Group revenue was up 20 percent.

Looking ahead to its second quarter, HP (HPQ) expects non-GAAP earnings-per-share of $1.03 to $1.05 on revenue of $29.4 billion to $29.7 billion. The company also raised its revenue outlook for fiscal 2010 to between $121.5 billion and $122.5 billion from an earlier forecast of $118 billion to $119 billion.

“HP is well-positioned to outperform the market,” HP CEO Mark Hurd said in a statement. “The strength of our portfolio, leaner cost structure and accelerating market momentum give us the confidence to raise our full-year outlook.”