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If Dell is looking for some of its lost market share and some of its missing sales and earnings, they're over at HP, which claimed not to have noticed any of what Dell last week, when it warned of a shortfall, called its "accelerate pricing adjustments" in the last quarter. According to HP CEO Mark Hurd (pictured), there weren't any noticeable spikes in price cuts from Dell; it's hell out there all the time.

HP came in with a stockholder-thrilling 51% year-over-year increase in fiscal second-quarter earnings that beat what Wall Street thought it could do on revenues of $22.6 billion that were in line with analyst expectations and up 5% year-over-year. Earnings came to 51 cents, or $1.7 billion, against expectations of 49 cents. Its operating profit weighed in at $1.7 billion and cash flow was $3.6 billion. Its margin was up 1.9 points to 7.3%.

Hurd, who has now beat the street in three consecutive quarters, estimates that HP took 1.4% of PC market share worldwide and 2% in the US, Dell's strongest geography. Hurd also said he was more interested in profits than in share.

And to top it all, since HP expects revenues of $91 billion this year, the pundits have started talking about HP growing bigger than IBM, which would almost vindicate Carly's determination to buy Compaq.

Hurd professed himself "pleased," but said there was still work to do to turn the behemoth around. Its software unit, fancy servers and services are all weak and the company is only a little more than half way through laying off the 15,300 people targeted for disposal. At the same time, Hurd is hot to recruit "hundreds" of salespeople, mindful that it will take six to nine months for them to come up to speed.

Although European operations will take more of the layoffs going toward, Hurd figures the geography is "undercovered."

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