Several Publicly-Traded Companies Issue Earnings Statements for Third Quarter.

Byline: Bob Keefe and John Pletz

Oct. 17--From the high end to the low end, IBM Corp. and Intel Corp. on Tuesday offered a glimpse of the computer-hardware industry's fortunes, or lack of them, during the third quarter.

Despite the breadth of its business -- from disk drives to mainframes and software to services -- IBM's earnings fell nearly 19 percent from a year ago amid a worldwide slump in technology spending that was further crippled by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Intel, the world's largest producer of processors for personal computers and low-end servers, saw its earnings plunge 96 percent. The company's profits have been sapped by a campaign of heavy price cuts undertaken to combat weak overall PC sales and hurt its primary rival, Advanced …