5 Companies That Dropped The Ball This Week

Dell Profit Continues To Fall

Dell Thursday reported a 79 percent drop in profit as PC sales continued to plummet. The company's profit for the first fiscal quarter of 2014 was $130 million, down from $635 million last year. Sales in Dell's PC division were down 9 percent.

The earnings announcement comes as CEO Michael Dell continues to try to take the company private in a leveraged buyout. In a piece of good news, Dell saw its enterprise systems revenue jump 10 percent.

"As we head into the new fiscal year, we continue to execute on our strategy of being a provider of end-to-end solutions. ... Our continued focus on customers and the ability to meet their needs is evident," said Senior Vice President and CFO Brian Gladden.

BlackBerry CEO Offers Mixed Message On Tablets

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins made headlines last month when he declared that tablets were just a passing fad, saying the devices "are not a good business model." Heins somewhat clarified his position during a Q&A session at the BlackBerry Live conference. After saying that BlackBerry believes "in a single element of mobile computing: one on your hip," Heins later stated BlackBerry is looking to invest in researching and developing tablets.

Huh?

Heins talked to CNET after the Q&A, saying that "the industry got stuck on the term 'tablets'" and his company does see a future for larger-screen devices.

Nokia Remains On Life Support

Nokia's fall from grace continued as the Finnish communications company finished No. 10 in smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2013, according to a report from Gartner.

"Nokia's mobile phone share dropped 4.9 percentage points in the first quarter of 2013 mainly due to a steep decline in feature phone sales," the research firm said.

The company did finish No. 2 in overall mobile phone shipment sales. However, the former worldwide leader is losing major market share to Samsung, which captured 23.6 percent. Nokia came in at 14.8 percent. It held a 19.7 percent share in the same quarter last year.

DOJ Cites Steve Jobs Evidence In Case Against Apple

The U.S. Department of Justice has made public an email once sent by Steve Jobs that it says proves Apple engaged in a price-fixing scheme with major publishers to "strip retailers of pricing authority."

The DOJ sued Apple in 2012 on charges of violating U.S. antitrust law. The trial is set to begin June 3. The U.S. cited an email sent by Jobs to former News Corp. CEO James Murdoch.

"Apple's iTunes Store and App Store have over 120 million customers with credit cards on file and have downloaded over 12 billion products," the undated email read. "This is the type of online assets that will be required to scale the e-book business into something that matters to the publishers."

Report: Windows 8 Faces Uphill Battle In Corporate Environments

The struggles of Windows 8 have been well documented and, according to a recent report from Forrester Research, those struggles will continue as Windows 8 attempts to be a corporate operating system. According to Forrester, many businesses have recently transitioned from Windows XP to Windows 7 and are wary of making another move.

"IT decision-makers see Windows 8 as a significant change from Windows 7, but not yet a positive one from the enterprise IT perspective," said the Forrester report.

The report said 46 percent of companies surveyed last fall hadn't looked at Windows 8. Forrester said 48 percent of commercial PCs use Windows 7, and 76 percent of companies said their new PCs will also run Windows 7.