Barclays previewed Intel's (INTC) 2Q09 on 7/14 and looks for solid trends and Q3 guidance above street ests, excluding $1.5 bln E.C fine. Firm remains impressed by execution and maintains constructive bias. Firm looks for Q2 revs slightly above their est of $7.3 bln vs consensus of $7.2 bln with gross margin and EPS likely ahead their 46% and EPS of $0.08 (consensus $0.07). At present, firm retains Equal Weight rating with upside potentially restrained to $18 tgt given thematic concerns on mix and ASPs constraining multiple.

Reuters.com reported that Microsoft's (MSFT 24.04 +0.27) new Bing search engine gained U.S. market share in its first month in operation but still trails dominant rival Google (GOOG 418.99 -2.60), according to data released. Bing, launched on June 3 but available to some users a few days earlier, took 8.23% of U.S. Web searches in June, up from 7.81% for Microsoft search just prior to its rollout and 7.21% in April, said Internet data co StatCounter.

Collins Stewart noted that Broadcom (BRCM 25.07 +0.28) is the incumbent in Ethernet, DSL, and Cable, but future growth hinges on success in the handset segment. Intel (INTC 17.04 +0.49) is looking to regain lost share in Ethernet adapters. It has licensed the FC stack from Cisco (CSCO 18.80 +0.15) and is well positioned to gain share with the industry adoption of unified fabric. By contrast, BRCM has no foothold in FCoE and failure to acquire ELX would result in secular decline for the enterprise client business. Broadcom legacy DSL business will continue to shrink. The growth is in xPON and without an EPON line, Broadcom appears to have completely missed out on the China opportunity.

Caris & Company initiated Oracle (ORCL 21.74 +0.32) with a Above Average and price target of $25 as the firm believes that the co is is well positioned to benefit from any recovery in global IT spending and take share in the enterprise application market. In addition, with its purchase of JAVA, the firm believes ORCL will elevate its market position allowing it to drive further share gains on a much broader scale regardless of what eventually happens to JAVA's hardware business.

FBR Capital's recent field checks suggest there is an increased likelihood that Taiwan Semi (TSM 9.44 +0.03) will exceed the Q2 guidance range, though there is also increased concern over 2H09 shipments and revenue momentum. In fact, not only do their checks suggest 40-nm yields but, to their surprise, these have remained below 30%, affecting shipments in 2H09; a few key customers have also started to cancel "hot" lots (a reflection of above-average wafer/die banks, increased risk of double ordering), while TSM has been unable to increase prices.

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