How Chips, PCs, Services Companies Are Faring

A look at how selected companies providing computers, components, services and related software are faring:

Wednesday: Research groups Gartner and IDC say personal computer shipments dipped during the final three months of last year amid a shortage of key parts or compelling innovations. Based on preliminary figures, Gartner is pegging the worldwide shipment decline at 1.4 percent from a year earlier, and IDC calculated the decrease at 0.2 percent. The slight downturn had been expected for several reasons, chiefly the growing popularity of mobile devices. That was compounded in the fourth quarter by hard-drive shortages because of flooding in Thailand and the fact that many products were either uninspiring or overpriced, according to analysts at Gartner and IDC.

Coming up:

Jan. 19: IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp.

Jan. 23: Western Digital Corp., Texas Instruments Inc.

Jan. 24: Apple Inc., EMC Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Altera Corp.

Jan. 25: SanDisk Corp., Xerox Corp.

Feb. 1: Qualcomm Inc.

Feb. 16: Applied Materials Inc.

Feb. 21: Dell Inc.

Feb. 22: Hewlett-Packard Co.

Unknown: Seagate Technology PLC, Lenovo Group Ltd., Nvidia Corp., Marvell Technology Group Ltd., Oracle Corp.