Big Tech Earnings Tonight – My Questions

UPDATED: QCOM IS A CLEAR BEAT, FFIV IS A BEAT, AAPL IS A BEAT – BUT SOME CONTROVERSY OVER WHETHER GUIDANCE IS “TOO CONSERVATIVE” AND “WEAK” MARCH IPAD SALES…

I’ll send you to StockTwits for all the running commentary you need tonight:

http://stocktwits.com/

G’NITE! – JB

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Earnings in one hour – tonight’s a big one for technology.

A few questions I have (that may or not be answered)…

1.  I have a deep distrust for some of the cloud equipment names right now.  My former love Riverbed (RVBD) has been acting doggy for weeks so there’s no way I want to own similar name F5 Networks (FFIV) into tonight’s report.  FFIV has already been killed over the last two months, has it already paid the price for too-high expectations?  Will an upbeat report from FFIV get me interested in revisiting RVBD?  We shall see.

2.  Just when you think all the good news is baked into Apple (AAPL), the company finds a way to blow us out of the water yet again.  I’m wondering a few things here – will Steve Jobs be on the call?  Will the analysts be asking questions about iPhone competition in light of all the Verizon Thunderbolt buzz this morning?  Are the expectations ever too high for this company?

3.  I’m long Qualcomm (QCOM) into its report tonight.  They crushed it last time they reported and the stock ripped through to a new year high –  then the Japanese earthquake scared everyone (Japan is a big market and manufacturing center for QCOM).  The stock was smashed back down from almost breaking 60 to 50 bucks again like the last report hadn’t happened.  I think if QCOM can allay fears over the Japanese disruption, we should be ok here – the company’s chipsets are in every single hot tablet and smartphone there is (including the new iPhones).

Anyway, let’s see if last night’s INTC and IBM calls were signs of good things to come.