By Alex Scroxton
21 October 2008
Sun Microsystems has joined the growing list of tech vendors
reporting tough markets after announcing disappointing Q1’09 preliminaries that
fell far short of analyst expectations.
Sun sales for the three months to the end of September are
expected to fall somewhere in the range of $2.95bn to $3.05bn, down from $3.2bn
during the first quarter of its fiscal ’08.
The vendor also admitted it expected to post a net loss per
share of around 30 cents, a figure that includes a $60m restructuring charge
that it announced in August.
Sun has also revealed that its struggle to remain
competitive against its chief rivals in the server market, Dell, HP and IBM,
means it will have to write down its overall value in the near future after ‘one
or more’ of its reporting units fell below carrying value.
“Sun and its customers are seeing the impact of a slowing
economy,” CEO Jonathan Schwartz lamented.
