AMD didn't follow in Intel's footsteps and post its best first quarter ever, but the No. 2 chip maker did manage to post a profitable quarter for the second consecutive time.

"Strong product offerings and solid operating performance resulted in record first quarter revenue,” said Dirk Meyer, AMD President and CEO. “We continue to strengthen our product offerings. We launched our latest generation of server platforms, expanded our family of DirectX 11-compatible graphics offerings, and commenced shipments of our next-generation notebook platforms to customers.”

AMD's net profit climbed to $257 million on a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) basis for the first quarter, which is a dramatic turnaround from the net loss of $416 million the company report in Q1 2009.

Coming as somewhat of a surprise, AMD's graphics segment revenue decreased 3 percent sequentially for the quarter, though it did increase 88 percent year-over-year. AMD said the sequential decrease was primarily the result of seasonal decline in royalties received in connection with the sale of game consoles, while the year-over-year increase was driving by an increase in GPU shipments.

HTC can afford to live high on the hog this year after posting higher revenues than the company anticipated. For the first quarter of 2010, HTC reported $1.19 billion in revenue, a 19.33 percent increase from one year ago. In a best case scenario, HTC had hoped to report anywhere from $1 billion to $1.07 billion for the quarter.

New phone shipments played an integral role in driving up HTC's numbers, particularly Android-based smartphones to T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, market watchers noted. March was especially kind to HTC, in which revenues reached  $515.57 million, a 60 percent sequential jump and 32.38 percent rise on year.

Market watchers expect HTC to perform even better in the second quarter, predicting revenues will reach as high as $1.37 billion.

Say what you want about bandwidth caps, metered Internet service, and other ISP woes - when all is said and done, the broadband business is thriving, and it will continue to do so, suggests ABI Research practice director Jason Blackwell. According to Blackewell, global fixed broadband service revenue will top $210 billion in 2014.

Broadband revenue has been steadily climbing. After reaching $145 billion in 2008, fixed broadband service pulled in $164 billion in 2009, a pretty big jump considering we're dealing with billions of dollars.

What's interesting to note is that broadband revenue continued to show significant growth, even as the economy came to a screeching halt. Part of the reason is because of the popularity of services like IPTV and online gaming.

The biggest benefactor is still DSL, which claims the lion's share of the market. DSL broadband service revenue claimed nearly $100 billion in 2009 all on its own, though ABI expects that to only grow to $103 billion in 2014.

Fiber broadband revenue, on the other hand, is showing tremendous growth. ABI Research reckons fiber broadband will pull in $24.4 billion in revenue by the end of the year.

HP on Wednesday posted its first quarter financial results for 2010, noting net revenue of $31.2 billion, up 8 percent for a year ago and 5 percent when adjusted for the effects of currency.

"HP is well-positioned to outperform the market," said Mark Hurd, HP chairman and chief executive officer. "The strength of our portfolio, leaner cost structure, and accelerating market momentum give us the confidence to raise our full-year outlook." 

It was a good quarter for HP's printer, enterprise storage and servers, and Personal Systems Group sectors, each of which posted increases in revenue, with the biggest bump a 26 percent hike in PSG. That's a different scenario from last quarter, when most of HP's main businesses posted declining sales.

"We haven't seen the kind of ASPs [average selling prices] we had in industry-standard servers for a long time," Hurd said on a conference call.