Also on Thursday, , saying that demand for tablets is dampening interest in PCs and laptops. Gartner expects PC shipments to total 387.8 million units this year, increasing by 10.5 percent year over year. Gartner's prior forecast called for 15.9 percent growth.

"We expect growing consumer enthusiasm for mobile PC alternatives, such as the iPad and other media tablets, to dramatically slow home mobile PC sales, especially in mature markets," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, .

Outside of the PC and mobile computing market, . Teradata, which already has an 11 percent stake in Aster Data, will pay $263 million for the rest of the company. The acquisition is widely seen as part of a wave of mergers and acquisitions in the market for information systems that can handle what's called "big data," a reference to high volumes of information of both structured and unstructured data.

Other include Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Vertica in February, IBM's deal to buy Netezza last September and EMC's purchase of Greenplum last July.

Teradata shares declined by $1.26 to $42.29 in midafternoon trading Friday. This may not have been a direct response to the merger news however, as all major indexes were trading lower on news of higher energy prices.