SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Data storage equipment maker NetApp Inc (NTAP.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) forecast revenue below expectations as concerns about the economy weighed on the outlook for business and government spending on information technology, sending its shares down 22 percent in after-hours trade.

NetApp’s report Wednesday came a day after Dell Inc (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) posted disappointing quarterly results that heightened concerns about cautious IT spending, sending tech stocks sharply lower.

Sunnyvale, California-based NetApp posted fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $1.70 billion compared to $1.43 billion in the year-ago period.

“NetApp’s outlook for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013 reflects the normal slower seasonality of the first quarter and increasing uncertainty in the broader macro environment,” the company said in a statement.

NetApp said it expects current-quarter revenue to be in the range of $1.40 billion to $1.50 billion. Analysts had expected NetApp to post $1.684 billion in revenue for the quarter ending in April and $1.606 billion for the quarter ending in July, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

NetApp’s net income for the fourth quarter was $181 million, or 47 cents a share, according to generally accepted accounting principles, compared to $161 million, or 40 cents a share, in the same quarter last year.

Shares of NetApp fell 22 percent to $25.55 in extended trading after closing down 1.3 percent at $32.86 in the regular session on Nasdaq.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Top European software company SAP AG plans to buy Ariba Inc in a deal valuing the business and commerce network company at $4.3 billion, its latest maneuver against Oracle in the fast-growing Internet-based computing market.

SAP is taking aim at Oracle, the world’s No. 2 maker of business management software, as they vie with Salesforce.com Inc in the multibillion dollar cloud-computing services market, one of the industry’s hottest area of growth.

Shares in Ariba, which were halted briefly, leapt 20 percent to SAP’s offer price of about $45 per share.

“This deal puts them more on the radar screen and gives them another big customer base they can sell additional services into. These are not inexpensive moves but it signals they are really tilting more toward the cloud,” said Evercore analyst Kirk Materne.

SAP’s announcement comes just weeks before Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is due to announce the Silicon Valley company’s latest cloud software strategy, on June 6.

The $45-per-share offer for Ariba, a darling of the first dotcom boom that has since reinvented itself as a major networking and online commerce software developer, values Ariba at 6.9 times expected 2013 revenue, according to Roth Capital Partners.

Salesforce.com trades around 5.5 times expected revenue.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 21 (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s underwhelming debut on Wall Street increases the pressure on the social networking giant to deliver stellar growth – a novel situation for Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who has been clear he is more interested in building products than making money.

Facebook shares fell 11 percent on Monday, the company’s second day as a publicly traded company, due to what many analysts and investors blamed on overly aggressive pricing by Facebook’s underwriters, as well as a decision to expand the size of the offering by 25 percent.

The poor stock market performance has intensified the scrutiny of Facebook’s business, raising the bar for the company to regain Wall Street’s confidence, say some investors and analysts.

“What’s most important now to investors is top line growth,” said Michael Binger, a senior portfolio manager at Gradient Investments. “If they’re interested in seeing their stock work, they need to have a good quarter,” he said, referring to Facebook.

Falling below the offering price is damaging to investor “psyche” noted Binger, who has personally bought some shares in Facebook but whose firm does not have a position.

“People who usually would be buying are now going ‘Something is seriously going wrong here.’ Emotions and skepticism take over,” he said.

Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, with net income of $1 billion – a sharp contrast to some of the money-losing Web companies such as Groupon Inc and Pandora Media Inc, that have recently gone public.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Applied Materials Inc’s (AMAT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) fiscal second-quarter revenue beat low expectations as demand for chips used in mobile devices fueled spending on its manufacturing equipment, but its revenue forecast fell a little short of analysts’ estimates.

Driven by the need for more chips for mobile devices, spending by foundries like TSMC (2330.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) on chip gear has recovered from a slump last year as they implement new technology to keep up with Intel Corp (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

But Applied Materials’ solar cell and display manufacturing businesses have been damaged by oversupply and weak pricing. Subsidy cuts in Europe have triggered a global glut of solar panels and driven down prices sharply.

Applied Materials’ stock has fallen 16 percent since the end of March when it forecast fiscal 2012 results below expectations. It now trades at the equivalent of 11 times expected earnings.

Applied Materials said revenue in the second quarter ending in April was $2.54 billion, down from $2.86 billion in the year-ago period.

It said it expects current-quarter net sales to be flat to down 10 percent sequentially. The midpoint of that range is equivalent to $2.413 billion.

Analysts had expected revenue of $2.399 billion for the quarter ending in April and $2.443 billion for the quarter ending in July, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 17 (Reuters) – Applied Materials Inc’s fiscal second-quarter revenue beat low expectations as demand for chips used in mobile devices fueled spending on its manufacturing equipment, but its revenue forecast fell a little short of analysts’ estimates.

Driven by the need for more chips for mobile devices, spending by foundries like TSMC on chip gear has recovered from a slump last year as they implement new technology to keep up with Intel Corp.

But Applied Materials’ solar cell and display manufacturing businesses have been damaged by oversupply and weak pricing. Subsidy cuts in Europe have triggered a global glut of solar panels and driven down prices sharply.

Applied Materials’ stock has fallen 16 percent since the end of March when it forecast fiscal 2012 results below expectations. It now trades at the equivalent of 11 times expected earnings.

Applied Materials said revenue in the second quarter ending in April was $2.54 billion, down from $2.86 billion in the year-ago period.

It said it expects current-quarter net sales to be flat to down 10 percent sequentially. The midpoint of that range is equivalent to $2.413 billion.

Analysts had expected revenue of $2.399 billion for the quarter ending in April and $2.443 billion for the quarter ending in July, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) – Nvidia Corp Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang wants his graphics chips to be adopted in data centers to help stream better graphics to smartphones and tablets, his company’s newest bid to diversify beyond personal computers.

Huang showed programmers and engineers at an industry event new technology adapting Nvidia’s Kepler graphics processors, or GPUs, for cloud computing.

“For the first time we have virtualized the GPU,” Huang said. “One GPU can now be shared with countless users.”

Huang, who cofounded Nvidia, showed demonstrations of a game with high-end graphics run from servers and played on mobile devices. The challenge Nvidia is tackling is to keep games fast and responsive even when they are played over data centers and across wireless carriers’ networks.

Keenly aware of explosive growth in tablets, smartphones and cloud computing, Nvidia is looking beyond its core business of designing chips that make games and videos look better on PCs.

Along with larger rival Qualcomm Inc, Nvidia is also suffering from a shortage of cutting-edge chips from TSMC after the contract manufacturer was slow to ramp up its new 28 nanometer process technology.

With demand for high-end chips much higher than expected, Qualcomm has said it will work with additional suppliers but will still have shortages through most of 2012.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 15 (Reuters) – PC chipmaker AMD’s chief executive is betting that its larger rival Intel has overestimated consumers’ willingness to pay top dollar for a new category of premium laptops.

Riding the coat-tails of Intel’s most expensive marketing push in a decade, new processors from AMD have been chosen for a handful of upcoming laptops in a wave of sleek personal computers with features like “instant on” made popular by tablets.

Targeting mainstream shoppers, thin laptops with AMD’s chips, previously code named Trinity, are set to sell in the $600 range, similar to many of the bulkier laptops now on the market and significantly cheaper than the high-end, Intel-powered ones increasingly appearing in stores.

“It seems like an opportunity to steal the bacon and go in there and capture this huge opportunity that someone else generated,” AMD Chief Executive Rory Read told Reuters in an interview. “They missed where the sweet spot of the market was.”

Intel has coined “Ultrabooks” to refer to svelte laptops using its processors, with high-quality features like solid-state drives and metal cases.

AMD, always struggling to keep up with its much larger competitor, has been referring more generically to ultrathin laptops.

Hewlett Packard last week unveiled a new “Sleekbook” lineup, with thin models using chips from both AMD and Intel.

SANTA CLARA, California (Reuters) – Intel Corp Chief Executive Paul Otellini said he is not seeing unexpected weakness in enterprise technology spending that Cisco CEO John Chambers cited when he forecast quarterly earnings below estimates.

“This quarter is playing out as we thought. The enterprise is good, it’s not fantastic, so we don’t see a change in that,” Otellini said in answer to a question at Intel’s annual investor day on Thursday.

Shares of Cisco Systems Inc, which relies on government and corporate spending on Internet gear, dropped more than 10 percent on Thursday following its earnings report a day earlier.

“I think John’s comments were focused on Europe in particular. We haven’t seen any change in Europe demand on the enterprise side,” Otellini said.

Much of the presentations by Otellini and other Intel executives showcased the chipmaker’s long-awaited push into smartphones and ultrathin laptops. Intel offered little new hope to investors concerned about languid PC sales.

Otellini also forecast that Intel, with its deep pockets, would survive as one of a handful of leading-edge chip manufacturers as the sector moves toward larger and costlier factories.

With the industry preparing to increase the size of the silicon wafers it uses, letting manufacturers fit more chips on each, future leading-edge factories will cost more than $10 billion (6.19 billion pounds) each to build, compared with about $5 billion now, Otellini added.

SANTA CLARA, California, May 10 (Reuters) – Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini showcased the top chipmaker’s long-awaited push into smartphones and talked up ultrathin laptops he hopes will spice up a category that seems increasingly dull compared to tablets and other mobile devices.

With worldwide PC sales barely growing, Intel Corp has been racing to find a foothold in smartphone and tablet markets, where processors based on ARM Holdings Pls’s power-efficient chip designs are widely used.

Last month in India, Lava International launched the first smartphone using Intel’s new Medfield processor and the device has received respectable reviews from benchmark testers.

Intel has also announced the Medfield chips would be used in upcoming phones from Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc, Lenovo Group Ltd ZTE and Orange.

“We’re getting awfully good reviews for our first phones,” Otellini told investors at an annual Intel event. “We have ambitions; you’ll see more announcements over time and very cool capabilities built into phones.”

Many investors are waiting to see how successful the new handsets become with consumers before declaring that the chipmaker is a serious player in the mobile market. But growing expectations that Intel will be able to compete have fueled gains in its shares in recent months.

Intel is also heavily promoting a PC category it has dubbed ultrabooks, similar to Apple Inc’s Macbook Air and offering some of the technological chic the iPad and other tablets epitomize.

CHANDLER, Arizona (Reuters) – It goes by the anodyne moniker Fab 42, but the new Intel Corp (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) factory being built in the Arizona desert is hardly a run-of-the-mill production facility.

At $5 billion, it will be the most advanced chip factory ever constructed, producing microchips with transistors so tiny that over 100 million of them could fit on the head of a pin.

And it represents a giant bet by the world’s largest semiconductor company that the United States can still be a good place to build things. If manufacturing is critical to jobs and long-term economic health, as many government and industry officials believe, then Fab 42 is an encouraging symbol of what could be.

Yet many technology executives worry that Intel’s new factory is less a sign of things to come than the last gasp of an advanced manufacturing sector that could readily go the way of its lower-tech predecessors — to Asia.

Those kinds of concerns have stoked an election-year debate on an old policy question: is there anything the U.S. can or should do to support manufacturing and the benefits that go with it?

“There are a lot of companies that are moving operational resources out of the U.S. and I have a tough time getting my arms around that being a good thing for us long-term,” said Mark Adams, president of Micron Inc (MU.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the last remaining U.S. memory chip manufacturer and historically a champion of government cooperation with the industry.

The loss of chip plants in the U.S. is not because labor is cheaper abroad — as in previous waves of manufacturing migration — but rather due to lower tax rates, complex international supply chains and abundant skilled workers.