Analysts at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter feel that IBM Corp’s second-quarter numbers will be affected by a host of factors and thus are projecting earnings of $1.45 per share versus a consensus of $1.49, itself down from an initial $1.54. The bank figures that a slow period in the mainframe server market while customers wait for the Symohony mainframe with the G5 processor, which should ship at the end of August, will leave the quarter a little light. Another factor impacting the quarter is the adverse pricing climate due to inventory overhang in PCs and Wintel servers. While it’s expected that IBM will see some improvement in this space during the second half, efforts to bring inventories down have probably hurt the current quarter. Another interesting concern is IBM’s Latin American business, where sales people who met first-quarter quotas were sent to the World Cup. Morgan Stanley is convinced that some second-quarter backlog was burned up by staff looking to get to France, thus making for a tough quarter in the region. On the plus side, IBM Global Services is projected to have booked a solid quarter, with year- over-year growth rates and margins both topping 20%.