This Morning: Dell Praised, RIMM Slammed, Advantage Nokia

Here are some things going on this morning in your world of tech:

Shares of Dell (DELL) are higher by 69 cents, or 7.2%, at $10.35 after Goldman Sachs’s Bill Shope raised his rating on the shares to Buy from Sell, arguing that a 31% decline since December 12th of 2010 gives it a favorable ratio of enterprise value to projected Ebitda of 3 times, almost half off the valuation of other hardware names. The bear case for PC names is already reflected in the shares at this point, he thinks, and the cash balance provides a buffer for the share price.

Interestingly,�Hewlett-Packard�(HPQ) shares are also higher, rising 19 cents, or 1.5%, at $13.18.

Shares of Research in Motion (RIMM) are off 28 cents, or 2.4%, after Canaccord Genuity’s Mike Walkley cut his rating on the shares to Sell from Hold, but raised his price target to $10 from $8, writing in regard to the January 30th expected debut of the company’s new “BlackBerry 10” operating system that “our checks and analysis of the global competitive landscape suggest a very low probability BlackBerry 10 sales can turn around RIM�s long-term business trends.”

Walkley also writes in a separate note that he raised his fiscal Q1 2013 estimate for Apple (AAPL) to $14.04 per share in profit from a prior $13.46 after channel checks for the month of November prompted him to slightly raise iPhone estimates, as they “indicated�very strong sales of the iPhone 5 at AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint and also in international markets with dramatically improved supply.”

Apple shares today are up $7.41, or 1.3%, at $592.69.

Speaking of wireless, Bloomberg’s Adam Ewing this morning writes that Nokia (NOK) may have an advantage over Apple in Europe because the “Lumia” line of phones running Microsoft‘s (MSFT) Windows Phone 8 operating system works on two dozen different 4G networks using “long term evolution,” or LTE speeds, while the iPhone 5 only works on two networks. Ewing quotes some shoppers who say they went with a Nokia because LTE was a must in their smartphone purchase.

Nokia shares are up 4 cents, or 1.2%, at $3.30.

Speaking even more of wireless, DigiTimes’s Adam Hwang�this morning reports that of the 64 million mobile phones sold in Q3, the vast majority, 49.2 million, were smartphones, up 29%, year over year. Citing data from Analysys International, Hwang writes that Google‘s (GOOG) Android operating system held 90% of the smartphone market by platform, versus just 4.2% for Apple’s iOS. But Apple had a higher average selling price, at �4,523 versus �1,393.

In case you missed it,�The Wall Street Journal‘s Steven Jones and Shira Ovide yesterday wrote a summary piece regarding weak sales of Microsoft’s Windows 8, citing data last week from�NPD Group that showed a 21% year-over-year decline in Windows PC sales in the month ending November 17th.

And in another missive over the weekend, Bloomberg’s�Jonathan Weil�writes that Xerox�(XRX) could be tech’s next write-down “disaster,” following HP. Writes Weil, “The most glaring sign that large writedowns may be needed at Xerox is a line on its books called goodwill, which is the intangible asset that a company records when it pays a premium in a takeover.”

“Xerox’s balance sheet would have investors believe that its goodwill alone, at $9 billion, is more valuable than what the market says the whole company is worth.”

Xerox shares this morning down 7 cents, or 1%, at $6.88.

The Daily, the iPad news magazine formed by News Corp. (NWS) started in early 2010, will cease publication on December 15th, the company announced today, as part of News’s planned split into two companies, a publishing arm, containing The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, publisher of this blog, and the media company, Fox Group. News chairman Rupert Murdoch remarked that The Daily was “a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term.” Murdoch said the brand will “live on in other channels.”