IBM reported strong preliminary fourth-quarter results that sent the technology company's shares sharply higher. IBM said earnings from continuing operations were $2.80 a share, up 24 percent from $2.26 a year earlier, while revenue rose 10 percent to $28.9 billion. Overseas sales helped results beat analysts' estimates. [WSJ]

Palm stock fell almost 7 percent today after the company reported that it lost $9.63 million in the latest quarter. Last year, in the same period, Palm earned $12.77 million. Too bad for Palm shareholders. Perhaps they can commiserate with the Palm employees that were laid off the week before Christmas. [AP]

Oracle's quarterly profit rose 35 percent year over year, while sales rose 28 percent. Oracle says its results indicate the company is gaining market share at the expense of rivals SAP and IBM. We say it's because boring is the new interesting. [Reuters]

Best Buy's quarterly profit stormed up 52 percent because of strong sales and fewer discounts than last year. Margin benefited from the "more rational" environment. Same-store sales climbed 6.7 percent. [WSJ]

Has cable's golden age ended? Cable-TV subscriptions were long seen as recession-proof. But as their price continues to soar, at last, consumers are voting with their pocketbooks. Comcast shares dropped 12.3 percent Wednesday after the company lowered earnings and growth forecasts. Added competition from Verizon, satellite providers and other cable companies took most of the blame as the triple-play price war continues, driving down average revenue per customer across the industry. On top of that, capital spending is up as Comcast rolls out more HD channels and video-on-demand. We would suggest that Comcast stockholders pray for strong growth, but after the cable giant blocked the Bible, it might not be the best idea.

VeriFone, a maker of credit-card readers, will restate three quarters' worth of earnings due to "accounting errors" in how it counted its inventories, the WSJ reports. Share prices dropped $22 to $26.03, a 45.8 percent freefall. New results will lower earnings by nearly $30 million.

Warner Music Group says its quarterly profit fell 58 percent year over year to $5 million from $12 million. Were it not for a $12 million settlement from Bertelsmann related to Napster, Warner would have had a quarterly loss. Revenue rose 2 percent to $869 million. For the year, Warner had a net loss of $21 million versus a profit of $60 million last year. The company said that revenues from online and mobile sales have risen, but this has not offset losses from conventional sales. Warner is attempting to make new agreements with artists to get part of touring and merchandise revenue, but it doesn't help that one of its star performers, Madonna, is dropping Warner for Live Nation when her contract is up.

TiVo said that revenue at the DVR maker rose 14 percent to $75.5 million. The company lost only $8.2 million last quarter, down from an $11.1 million loss on $66 million in sales last year. Most of this increase in revenue has come from licensing fees. TiVo is increasingly sharing its technology with other companies, including Comcast. The company said its partnership with Comcast should start generating revenue shortly. TiVo shareholders had better hope so.

Hewlett-Packard earned $2.16 billion on $28.3 billion in revenue in the quarter ending October 31. This was $1 billion more than Wall Street analysts expected. A billion here, a billion there, and before you know it, you're kicking Dell in the nuts. [AP]

Digital music sales made up 15 percent of Universal Music's third-quarter revenues, bringing in $714 million — a increase of 47 percent from last year. How much of this growth is attributable to iTunes? Probably not enough to call a truce in the great iTunes pricing war of 2007. [PaidContent]

Nvidia reported excellent results for the just-ended third quarter. The graphics chip maker reported profits of $235.7 million on $1.12 billion in revenue — the first time quarterly revenue beat $1 billion. Revenue grew more than 36 percent and income was up 121 percent year-over-year. [The Register]

OK, OK, maybe that's not exactly how thing went down — but I'm going to pretend it did. Earlier this week I wrote about how Apple will be bigger than Google because of the innovative money-making platform that is the iPhone. But it's not just the business model that has Wall Street analysts excited — it's Apple's innovative accounting (and I don't mean stock-options backdating).

Microsoft remains in high spirits after its Entertainment and Devices division, responsible for the Xbox and Zune, posted a profit last quarter. This division hasn't made it into the black in years. Papa Steve Ballmer is so proud, he's planning "an upscale campus" for the product group. No doubt Redmond hopes to spur these slackers' performance by making corporate rock stars like J Allard and Robbie Bach feel drunk with power. (Note to Ballmer: Don't take that literally. Actually including a bar may not boost productivity.) What message is Microsoft sending to its less troubled children? If you want nice things, start losing money.

Ad executives spent Tuesday evening telling me that Facebook's advertising innovations have "blown MySpace out of the water," to quote one source. But you won't catch News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acting like he's been left high and dry, at least not publicly. Reporting News Corp.'s third-quarter earnings yesterday, Murdoch said "any fear [about MySpace] is misplaced." Why? According to reports, Murdoch told analysts Facebook isn't a social network like MySpace, it's a utility. "Like a phonebook."

Network-equipment giant Cisco reported earnings of $2.2 billion on $9.5 billion in revenue this past quarter — a 37 percent jump in profits and a 17 percent rise in sales year-over-year. Despite the gains, shares in Cisco fell 4 percent in after-hours trading. [AP]

Sun Microsystems reported $89 million in income on $3.2 billion in revenue — a 1 percent increase year-over-year. "What we need to see is if this company can ever grow again, and the jury is still out on that question," noted one analyst. Forget that. With all the growth in online advertising, Sun should ditch the server business and figure out how to monetize CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog. Or maybe launch a social network for Java programmers. [WSJ]

Dell hopes to resume its stock buyback program and return to business as usual now that it has finally restated earnings from fiscal year 2003 through the fiscal first quarter of 2007. Reported earnings were reduced $92 million, less than one percent of total net income over the period of time. [Forbes]

Microsoft's games division has inched its way back into the black, fueled by, you guessed it, Halo 3 sales. The Entertainment and Devices division posted $165 million profit for its first quarter (no thanks to the Zune). [Ars Technica]

Chinese search engine Baidu more than doubled its third-quarter profits over last year, bringing them to 181.7 million yuan or $23 million. Baidu is still dominating the market over there, seeing 60.5 percent of China's searches. Google is a distant second with 23.7 percent. [International Herald Tribune]