Dell's profits jumped 29% to $799 million, or 31 cents a share, on revenues that rose 20% to $11.7 billion. The results were in line with consensus and the company's revised guidance for July, which had increased its earning forecast by two cents.

In Q2 last year, Dell earned $621 million, or 24 cents a share, on revenues of $9.78 billion.

The company said global product shipments were up 19% in the quarter.

On a conference call with analysts, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins bragged about Dell's "consistency of execution" and how it had met guidance for 14 consecutive quarters.

Unlike HP CEO Carly Fiorina, Rollins said Dell saw no sales slowdown in the quarter. "I'm really surprised about some of the comments that I'm hearing about July." Rollins said, dissing Carly. Thursday morning Fiorina had said HP sales slowed toward the end of the quarter.

Rollins said Dell sees "a strengthening corporate buying cycle and expects that to continue," again a clear contrast to Carly's cautious outlook.

Dell CFO Jim Schneider said the company posted double-digit growth across all products, segments and regions.

In contrasts to HP's feeble enterprise server and storage performance, Dell said server units shot up 31% in the quater external storage revenues were up 13%.

Dell said it was seeing strong demand for mid-range storage systems with Dell/EMC SAN revenues up 36% on disk capacity growth of about 70%. As expected, revenues from the high-end EMC Symmetrix systems that Dell has been selling with some of its products fell. Dell has focused on the mid-range Clarions and scaled back Symmetrix sales.

Notebook units were up 28%; desktop units grew 15%.

Services revenues were up 35% driven by strong performance in professional and managed services.

Software and peripheral revenues grew 31% worldwide and 47% in Europe.

Dell, who's new to the printer game and long-term threat to HP's gold mine, the source of its profits, expects to sell five million units this fiscal year and exceed its goal of $1 billion in revenues.

 

Dell plans to focus on expanding printer sales internationally during the rest of the year and fill out its product line. The company hinted that a color laser printer launch was in the offing.

Dell's total revenues in the Americans grew 16% to $7.97 billion compared to HP's growth of 4%.

Dell has $11.8 billion in the bank.

This quarter, it is forecasting earning of 33 cents a share on revenues of $12.5 billion. It expects unit shipments to grow 9% sequentially or 21% year-over-year.

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