HP Can't Get Out Of The Commodity Trap

By Dana Blankenhorn: AMD (AMD), which has had more lives than most cats, is running out of them, and its last roll of the dice tells investors volumes about the direction of the semiconductor market.

By Dana Blankenhorn: Dell (DELL) insists its new Ultrabooks are selling three times faster than expected, although they don't give out any figures.Some analysts say they're now more optimistic about the PC's future.But should they be?

By Dana Blankenhorn: Intel (INTC) announced results in line with expectations but guided down, blaming the global economy.The global economy is not the problem. Intel has yet to address the key difference between the PC market and the device market.

By Dana Blankenhorn: Just as when marriages end in divorce, the dissolution of a corporate alliance leads to people picking sides.

By Dana Blankenhorn: A recent IEEE article shows just how close we are to the end game of Moore's Second Law.Rachel Courtland writes that the number of chip foundry companies has shrunk in recent years from 20 to four due to the ever-increasing cost of producing new designs. This increase is a natural byproduct of what has long been thought of as Moore's Second Law.

By Dana Blankenhorn: I believe Moore's Law has always been misunderstood, even by Gordon Moore, who coined it.

HP will be launching its first Chromebook in February, according to a leaked document found on the HP website. Chromebooks are Google's name for laptops that run its stripped-down, Web-friendly Chrome operating system. The document is no longer on the site but it revealed pretty detailed plans and specs for a device called the HP Pavilion Chromebook.

By Dana Blankenhorn: Not all tech earnings are created equal.Most big company tech stocks hover in the mid-teens, in terms of multiples. Microsoft (MSFT) is at the low end of the range, Google (GOOG) at the high end, Apple (AAPL) in the middle.