HP, which pre-announced relatively happy results a couple of weeks ago when it said it was buying 3Com, came in exactly on target with earnings of $2.4 billion, or 99 cents a share, up 14%, on revenues of $30.8 billion, down 8.4% year-over-year from $33.6 billion.

And the company reiterated that it should do $29.6 billion to $29.9 billion this quarter and earn 90 to 92 cents a share. Its full-year outlook is for $118 billion-$119 billion and EPS of $4.25-$4.35.

In a statement CEO Mark Hurd, who still finds the economy "challenging" despite signs of recovery and projections of growth next year, said services, aided by HP's EDS acquisition and so up 8% to $8.9 billion, drove the record profits but Hurd-style cost cutting had an awful lot to do with it too.

He expects to outperform the market because of HP's scale and range of offerings. But then he also expects to make further cuts on the services side already down 19,000 jobs while still hiring on the sales side.

Although services increased 8% to $8.9 billion in Q4 all of HP's units were off big time.

PCs were down 12% to $9.9 billion despite an 8% increase in shipments; printers were down 15% to $6.5 billion; software was off 16% to $967 million; and servers and storage were down 17% to $4.2 billion for total annual revenues of $114.6 billion, down 3% year-over-year.

HP, like everybody else, has been having its biggest problems in EMEA, Europe actually, where Q4 revenues were off 17% to $11.7 billion. The Americas were only off 3% to $13.6 billion and Asia was down a merely 1% to $5.4 billion. Hurd said European uncertainties were holding HP back from tickling its 2010 projections more. Europe's performance, he said, wasn't consistent enough to call a bottom there. Things are too spotty.

HP revenues were up ~20% in China; the other BRIC countries were down 4%. The 3Com acquisition is expected to burnish HP's revenues out of China. HP is currently getting 40% of revenues from the US and China.

HP's printer gold mine, which has been looking a bit tarnished the last few quarters, underperformed for want of goods in Q4. It was up 1.4% last quarter on the earnings side and experienced a 20% drop in shipments but Hurd is expecting double-digit growth this quarter even if inventory hasn't quite caught up yet.

HP claims to be tops in the US enterprise PC market, Dell's sweet spot, with double-digit year-over-year share gains despite the absence of revival.

The company has boosted its share buy-back budget to a hefty $12 billion, up 3x.