Despite a wobbly economy, especially in Europe, IT spending seems to be holding steady. Brian Schwartz, an analyst with ThinkEquity, checked in with 16 IT industry contacts and asked about their spending plans for the coming year. The answers, he says, point to positive results in Oracle’s report today. “Contacts surveyed, on average, finished 1 percent above their plans in Q2 and estimate their customers’ overall IT budgets will grow about 3 percent in 2012,” Schwartz wrote in a note to clients on Dec. 15.

Also in Oracle’s favor: The priority in IT spending is shifting away from things that generate revenue and toward things that help control costs. “This transition could provide a nice tailwind for Oracle’s many cost-savings products around data-center consolidation,” Schwartz writes.

Of the 16 people surveyed, Schwartz says, seven were positive, five were neutral and four were negative. Those in the positive column said they expect their IT budgets to grow incrementally in 2012, and they seemed bullish on Oracle’s database and middleware offerings, which help reduce the overall footprint of their data centers. Those in the negative column cited uncertainty about Europe and the financial services sector. Some financial customers are cutting their spending on things like outside consultants, and sales cycles for certain products are growing longer.

The consensus view of Wall Street analysts calls for Oracle to report sales of $9.23 billion and a per-share profit of 57 cents. Schwartz rates Oracle a Buy with a $36 price target, which would amount to a 26 percent improvement over Monday’s closing price of $28.61. Oracle shares have fallen by a little less than 9 percent since the end of 2010.

The consensus view of analysts says that Oracle will report $10.75 billion in sales and a profit of 71 cents a share, but several analysts expect the company to beat the consensus view.

“#Winning: Ignore the Noise” was the unironic title of Credit Suisse analyst Philip Winslow’s note to clients on June 9. The “noise” he referred to was a recent selloff in Oracle shares, and a drop in its share price from its highest point in five years: $36.50 in May to less than $31 a share last week. What happened? Macroeconomic concerns, for one. Both the Nasdaq and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have been down this month, despite a surge yesterday, mainly on worries surrounding weak jobs reports.

At Oracle specifically, there were also concerns, Winslow writes, about a shakeup in Oracle’s sales force, and slowing sales momentum on the Exadata server line. Winslow dismisses both: Oracle, he says, met and probably exceeded its May sales targets, and saw a boom in sales of its Fusion Middleware, Siebel, and PeopleSoft software. On top of that, lingering concerns that Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems might drag down Oracle’s overall profit margin are overstated, Winslow says: “We believe that Oracle’s Exadata and Exalogic pipeline is beginning to translate into a more meaningful revenue stream that will ultimately drive meaningful upside to long-term estimates.” The recent selloff in Oracle shares, he says, is a buying opportunity.

Winslow’s checks with Oracle’s customers suggest that the last two months of the quarter were “extremely busy” for Oracle’s sales team as it sought to aggressively close deals ahead of the close of the end of Oracle’s fiscal year. He says the pipeline for the quarter ending in August looks good, too.

He also takes a lengthy look at some changes to Oracle’s sales team, and finds that Oracle’s team tended to spend most of its time with customers who bought the most, while those who tended to buy less got less attention, meaning that some business was getting left on the table. Under a change implemented by new president Mark Hurd, these “non-focus” accounts are getting renewed attention from new salespeople. Meanwhile the salesperson retains his or her “focus” accounts with roughly the same sales quota but with fewer accounts to manage overall. The result, he says, should help sales in the long run.

Winslow expects Oracle to report $10.8 billion in sales and earnings of 72 cents a share.

Gleacher & Company analyst Yun Kim expects a strong quarter, too: “In our view, the overall enterprise IT spending environment remains resilient and continues to be driven by large, highly strategic IT infrastructure investments and new business initiatives,” Kim wrote in a June 8 note to clients, though, unlike Winslow at Credit Suisse, he remains concerned about the August quarter.

The first quarter of Oracle’s fiscal year is typically its weaker quarter seasonally, Kim says, but that’s not an indication of a longer-term weakness. “We believe Oracle is likely to issue Q1 guidance that is in-line with our and current street estimates, which could imply greater seasonal F1Q weakness than in recent years,” he writes. “We would not interpret in-line F1Q guidance as any negative indication of its current state of business, which we believe remains strong.” Kim expects Oracle to report sales just shy of $10.9 billion, and per-share earnings of 71 cents.

ThinkEquity analyst Brian Schwartz, in his own checks of Oracle’s sales channel, noticed a positive trend, too: “On average, contacts finished 2 percent above their plans and most report Oracle experienced a better demand environment the past three months,” he wrote in a June 17 note. He said he did notice a “softening trend” in IT spending by financial services companies, but that a weakness there could be offset by stronger sales of Exadata hardware. One of Schwartz’s contacts tells him that Oracle’s Exadata products are “killing HP in the market” and “taking share from all the storage players.” Hewlett-Packard shareholders, take note.

Last week, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek warned that a bottleneck at Apple’s manufacturing partner might limit initial availability of the device or delay its launch. Then yesterday, Digitimes–not the most reliable of sources–published a report suggesting there would be no such inventory issues or delays.

Now, ThinkEquity analyst Vijay Rakesh has issued a note echoing Misek’s claim.

“Our checks in Taiwan indicate some minor delays on the iPad,” Rakesh writes. “The manufacturing of the iPads was supposed to pick up in February, but volumes even in March are still low. Current volumes are much lower than the market expected but most checks are indicating minor delays.”

Rakesh says his checks suggest that iPad production volumes are currently at about 200K to 250K for the month, but should ramp up to 800K to one million per month by April or May. “We believe this is just a minor hiccup in a longer-term entirely new revenue stream and product roadmap for [Apple],” he says.

Who best to believe, if we are to believe anyone at all? Honestly, I have no idea. As I mentioned, Digitimes doesn’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to Apple (AAPL) rumors. Neither does Misek, really. That said, the fact that channel checks conducted by two research houses both found production issues in Apple’s iPad manufacturing, suggests there may be something here.

“It appears that Amazon is gaining share the old-fashioned way,” ThinkEquity analyst Ed Weller noted last week, “by acquiring more and more customers…and selling more to each of them.” And judging from the nice gain in third-quarter earnings the company posted after Thursday’s closing bell, that would seem to be the case.

Net income for the period surged 69 percent thanks to a strong increase in sales. Analysts had been looking for earnings of 33 cents a share on revenue of $5.02 billion for the quarter. Amazon (AMZN) reported 45 cents a share, compared with 27 cents a share for the same period the previous year. Revenue rose 28 percent to $5.45 billion.

Once again, it seems Amazon has not broken out Kindle sales numbers in its report, though CEO Jeff Bezos did stress them in an earnings release. Said Bezos: “Kindle has become the #1 bestselling item by both unit sales and dollars–not just in our electronics store but across all product categories on Amazon.com. It’s also the most wished for and the most gifted. We are grateful for and energized by this customer response.”

Looking ahead to the key fourth quarter, Amazon is calling for revenue in the range of $8.125 billion to $9.125 billion. Analysts have been forecasting revenue of $8.13 billion. Given that the upcoming quarter includes the annual holiday shopping binge, Amazon may be looking at another blowout quarter.

Shares in the company are spiking on the news, up over nine percent to $101.90 as I write this.

“It appears that Amazon is gaining share the old-fashioned way,” ThinkEquity analyst Ed Weller noted last week, “by acquiring more and more customers…and selling more to each of them.” And judging from the nice gain in third-quarter earnings the company posted after Thursday’s closing bell, that would seem to be the case.

Net income for the period surged 69 percent thanks to a strong increase in sales. Analysts had been looking for earnings of 33 cents a share on revenue of $5.02 billion for the quarter. Amazon (AMZN) reported 45 cents a share, compared with 27 cents a share for the same period the previous year. Revenue rose 28 percent to $5.45 billion.

Once again, it seems Amazon has not broken out Kindle sales numbers in its report, though CEO Jeff Bezos did stress them in an earnings release. Said Bezos: “Kindle has become the #1 bestselling item by both unit sales and dollars–not just in our electronics store but across all product categories on Amazon.com. It’s also the most wished for and the most gifted. We are grateful for and energized by this customer response.”

Looking ahead to the key fourth quarter, Amazon is calling for revenue in the range of $8.125 billion to $9.125 billion. Analysts have been forecasting revenue of $8.13 billion. Given that the upcoming quarter includes the annual holiday shopping binge, Amazon may be looking at another blowout quarter.

Shares in the company are spiking on the news, up over nine percent to $101.90 as I write this.

Burton writes in a research note that he thinks RIMM is a great company, but that its margins are going to get squeezed by increasing competition, and that it needs to invest more to expand. “Some of this has been recognized by the deterioration of the stock,” he writes, “but we believe there is still significant downside to current earnings estimates.”

Burton says the handset sector “has always been brutal where distribution is sometimes as important as the quality of ones product portfolio, but it is also facing a new wave of competition in its core market in QWERTY smartphones.”

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The more bearish stance follows an earnings warning from the company earlier this week. Hoopes points out that the company’s $210 million to $220 million inventory write-down raises new concerns about a 2007 controversy involving allegations over inventory accounting issues.

As Hoopes notes, in October 2007, former LDK controller Charley Situ alleged discrepancies in the company’s accounting for “possibly unusable inventory.” In December 2007, he recalls, LDK announced that an investigating committee found no material errors in the company’s state silicon inventory and said that a provision for obsolete or excess silicon feedstock was not required.

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Hoopes contends that global solar demand headwinds are unlikely to subside for at least the next few quarters. “Take-or-pay contracts are only as good as the counter-party’s willingness and ability to do either,” he notes. Hoopes points out that Q-Cells, on its Dec. 9 conference call, said it will allow a flexible delivery schedule for customers and will also offer discounted prices to help share the burden.”

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“We believe the netbook market is starting to make inroads into the core notebook market as a more price-conscious consumer opts for the cheaper alternative,” he wrote in his Intel note this morning. Intel is addressing the netbook market with its Atom processor, so the company is not being cut out of the food chain; but Rakesh notes that Atom processors sell at much lower price points and carry thinner gross margins. The Atom, he notes, sells for $20-$40 and carries a 45 percent gross margin, while the Core2Duo sells for $140-$250 and carries a gross margin of 56 percent.

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