A few days before Apple (AAPL) unveils the new iPhone, Intel (INTC) has given us a reminder that, this year too, it is excluded from the smartphone and tablet festivities. Its great optimism about the new market it is pushing with all its might, thin Ultrabook computers, may be justified, but it is irrelevant to this year, because of the later than expected launch of Microsoft’s (MSFT) new operating system.

Intel released its warning on Friday because it wanted to get it out of the way so that it could speak freely about its situation at an important conference it is holding this week. Starting tomorrow, and for three days, at the Intel Developer Forum that it holds annually in San Francisco, its managers will explain about all the innovative technologies that are meant to make significant contributions to sales in the future and reduce the company’s large dependence on the traditional PC market.

Besides that conference, there will be several investor conferences this week. Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq:MLNX; TASE:MLNX) CFO Michael Gray will, as usual, be highly optimistic tomorrow and Wednesday when he speaks at conferences being organized by Deutsche Bank and ThinkEquity. Managers from Ceva Inc. (Nasdaq:CEVA); LSE:CVA) and Radware Ltd. (Nasdaq: RDWR) will also speak at both these conferences.

In Ceva’s case, there is room for optimism about the fourth quarter and next year, after the blow it took from the decline of Nokia (NOK) earlier this year. Ceva’s products are in several models of the Galaxy 3 telephone, which has become a huge success for Samsung, and it also provides the DSP solutions for Chinese semiconductor maker Spreadtrum (SPRD), which is enjoying excellent business momentum, causing it to rise by nearly 30% on Nasdaq in the past month.

I know that Radware will be optimistic at the conferences this week, because, last Thursday, at a conference in Boston, it met analysts from Morgan Stanley (MS), which does not cover the company, and they wrote that Radware was growing nicely this year, particularly in the US market, which had been problematic for it for many years. The analysts point out that, among other things, Radware’s agreements with Juniper Networks (JNPR) and Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) have contributed to its success, and say they believe this has come at the expense of market leader F5 (FFIV), which is going to have problems until the end of the year, and will be back on form only next year, after it finishes developing rival systems…Read More>>

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