Conflicting signals from the tech world. On Thursday Microsoft unveiled a 17 per cent slump in quarterly revenues. A few hours later, in South Korea, Samsung Electronics unveiled a 16 per cent year-on-year jump in second-quarter sales. Memory chips and liquid crystal displays swung back into the black. Operating profits improved five-fold from the quarter before.

Samsung, like Intel, is benefiting from higher component costs – the result of industry-wide capacity cuts. Asia’s biggest technology company indicated to the market this month that profits would beat expectations on the back of rising prices for memory chips and LCD screens. Rising prices for dynamic random access memory, up 23 per cent quarter on quarter and flash memory, up 29 per cent, will eventually hit hardware-makers’ margins as they work their way through the supply chain.