Hardnosed Dell mega-shareholder Carl Icahn gives up the fight against Michael Dell's ambitions of buying the company sharing his name back, and admits war against Dell and the board "would be almost impossible to win."

"The Dell board, like so many boards in this country, reminds me of Clark Gable's last words in "Gone with the Wind,"" Icahn says in a letter to fellow shareholders. "They simply "don't give a damn.""

Dell gives no comment on the story as yet.

In the letter Icahn blames his throwing the towel on procedural issues, such as the August refusal from the Delaware Chancery Court to fast-track a lawsuit against the company. Icahn was hoping the courts (via the upholding of appraisal rights under Delaware law) would force Dell would hold its annual meeting at the same time it was to vote on the buyout deal, giving him a chance to replace the current board with a new set of directors.

In a spot of breaking late-night surprise news Microsoft buys the Nokia Devices & Services division, together with licenses for Nokia patents and mapping services. The price? A cool €5.44 billion.

The acquisition covers both smartphones and feature phone lines (chiefly the Lumia and Asha series), and sees the transfer of 32000 Nokia employees to Microsoft from design, operations, sales, marketing and support teams.

Nokia retains its myriad patents, but grants Microsoft a 10-year non-exclusive license.

"It's a bold step into the future-- a win-win for employees, shareholders and consumers of both companies," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says. "Bringing these great teams together will accelerate Microsoft's share and profits in phones, and strengthen the overall opportunities for both Microsoft and our partners across our entire family of devices and services."

In order to "drive ongoing turnaround" HP management gets a shuffle-- and drive the turnaround it needs to, since the company posts a -8% Y-o-Y decline on Q3 2013 revenues worth $27.2 billion.

Net earnings for the quarter drop by -15% Y-o-Y to $1.7bn.

All HP divisions bar software post Y-o-Y declines, causing CEO Meg Whitman to admit "total company Y-o-Y revenue growth in fiscal 2014 is unlikely... That said, I remain confident we are making progress in our turnaround."

Thus, in hopes to at least improve Enterprise Group business HP replaces chief Dave Donatelli with COO Bill Veghte, who retains his current responsibility over HP cloud efforts to effectively unite both portfolios under a single leader.

Infamously bullish Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announces he is to retire within 12 months-- leaving the once technology leader with no clear successor, at least so far.

“There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time,” Ballmer says. “We have embarked on a new strategy with a new organization and we have an amazing Senior Leadership Team. My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction.”

The news comes around 6 weeks after the "far-reaching realignment" of the company's management, part of an effort to create a "One Microsoft" out of a conglomerate with a payroll of over 90000 employees...

Microsoft already has a special committee directing the hunt for a replacement, with the likes of Bill Gates and independent board director John W. Thompson joining forces with executive recruiting firm Struggles International.

Combined Lenovo smartphone and tablet sales beat PCs for the first time in Q2 2013-- the company says smartphone sales reach 11.4 million units and tablets total 1.5m.

When it comes to PCs Lenovo sees growth in laptops, with sales reaching $4.5 billion with 4.7% Y-o-Y growth, while Q2 2013 desktop sales drop by -2.8% on a Y-o-Y basis.

According to Gartner Lenovo is the only top 5 vendor seeing growth in the W. European Q2 2013 PC market-- 18.9% Y-o-Y to be precise, far ahead from the struggling likes of HP, Acer and Dell. The company comes 3rd in the vendor rankings with 11.5% share (up from 7.8% in Q2 2012).

“While driving profitable growth in our core PC business, we are rapidly transforming our company into a PC Plus company." CEO Yang yuanqing says. "The PC Plus market requires fast, efficient innovation as it moves quickly from premium products to mainstream ones and from mature market domination to emerging market hyper growth."

Follow a companywide "organisational simplification initiative" Symantec reports fiscal Q1 2014 revenues of $1.7 billion with 2% growth, even if profits drop by -9% Y-o-Y to $157m.

The company makes most revenue from User Productivity & Protection, a segment representing 43% of total Symantec revenues-- if with a -1% Y-o-Y decline on revenues worth $732m.

Information Security (covering mail & web security, authentication services, data center security, Managed Security Services (MSS), hosted security services, and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) businesses) revenues are up by 7% Y-o-Y to $336m, while Information Management grows by 4% Y-o-Y to $641m.

The company also sees 8% Y-o-Y growth from EMEA. The region represents 27% of total Symantec revenues.

Panasonic claims it will soon start mass-production of the first computer products with mounted ReRAM, the faster, lower-power alternative to NAND flash memory.

Also known as memristor or "memory resistor," ReRAM combines the properties of a resistor and memory in a new circuit element. Memristor technology requires less energy, is faster than present storage technologies and retains information even when the power is off.

Numerous companies are working on ReRAM projects (such as HP and Hynix) but Panasonic insists it is the first to get the technology "in a microcomputer," in this case the 8-bit MN101LR series microcomputer.

AMD Q2 2013 losses total $74 million from revenues reaching $1.16 billion with 7% Q-o-Q growth (or -18% Y-o-Y decline) as it sees falling graphics product shipments and a sequential increase in computing products.

However the company says it is still on the way to growth, and should become profitable in Q3 2013.

"Our focus on restructuring and transforming AMD resulted in improved financial results," AMD CEO Rory Read says. "Our performance in Q2 2013 was driven by opportunities in our new high-growth and traditional PC businesses. Looking ahead, we will continue to deliver a strong value proposition to our established customers and also reach new customers as we diversify our business"

Reveues from the AMD Computing Solutions (CS) segment (covering CPUs, APUs, chipsets, embedded processors and server chips) total $841 million with 12% Q-o-Q growth (and Y-o-Y declines of -20%), with by higher notebook, server and desktop unit shipments driving sequential growth.