10 signs from companies that point to an upturn

Computerworld - With unemployment rates high and an improving but still uncertain economic outlook, big tech companies are looking to the immediate future with tempered optimism. IBM's recent assessment that the economy has "really stabilized" may have best summarized expectations.

But some of the more interesting clues about what's ahead for tech may be in the results of companies with a more specialized market focus.

Here are 10 data points about the most recent third quarter:

1. If there's one industry to watch next year, it's clean technology. The federal government stimulus package set aside billions of dollars for a sector that's already heating up. For instance, SunPower Corp.'s third-quarter revenue was $466 million, compared with $298 million in the second quarter and $378 million in the third quarter of 2008. Its share price may have taken a hit on a lower outlook, but the company's career page lists 60 job openings.

2. Venture capital investments are increasing. In the third quarter, there was $4.8 billion in 637 deals -- a 17% increase in terms of dollars from the prior quarter, driven by clean tech investments. There was a decline of 3% in the overall number of deals, according to report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association. The slight decline in deals, from 657 in the prior quarter, may indicate a shift to longer-term investments, according to the industry association.

3. Hynix Semiconductor Inc., a memory chip maker in Seoul, on Monday reported a net profit of $207 million for the third quarter, after seven consecutive quarters of losses. That represents a 26% increase over the previous quarter.

4. Hard drive maker Western Digital Corp. said last week that it finished its most recent quarter with 44.1 million hard drive shipments, compared with 39.4 million shipments same quarter last year. Revenues were $2.2 billion, a new record for the Lake Forest, Calif.-based company.

5. Last week, Riverbed Technology Inc.'s third-quarter revenue was $102 million, an increase of 12% from $91 million in the second quarter, and an increase of 18% from $86.5 million in the same period a year ago. The San Francisco-based company makes WAN optimization technology, which helps improve application response times, something SaaS (software as a service) applications, in particular, need.

6. Infinera Corp. revenues for the third quarter were $83.4 million, compared with $68.9 million for the second quarter this year -- a 21% increase. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which makes digital optical networking systems sold to carriers, said its results demonstrated that customers are investing again.

7. Splunk Inc., a privately held company in San Francisco that produces a tool for searching, analyzing and troubleshooting IT infrastructure, said its revenue for the year's first three quarters was $26.6 million, compared with $13.1 million for the same three quarters last year.

8. Apple Computer Inc. sold 3.05 million Macs during the third quarter, a 17% increase over the year-ago quarter, providing evidence that for consumers, some things are indispensable.

9. Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a company based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Yokneam, Israel, reported $32.7 million in third-quarter revenue this month, a 29% increase over its second-quarter revenue of $25.3 million. The company makes InfiniBand and Ethernet connectivity products.

10. Intel Corp. is a good company to end this list with, because of its outlook on chips. Intel's third-quarter revenue of $9.4 billion was up $1.4 billion from the prior quarter. These results help set the stage for broad optimism in tech stocks, and the company sees "momentum" ahead.

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