HP has reported impressive results in its fiscal third quarter ended July 31 in contrast to its Silicon Valley rival Sun Microsystem (which turned in pathetic results in its fiscal fourth quarter ended June 30, 2008).

HP reported revenue of $28 billion, up 10% from a year earlier and up 5% after adjusting for currency fluctuation. Net income for the quarter was $2.03 billion compared to $1.78 billion in the year earlier period.

HP said revenue from outside of the U.S. in the third quarter was 68% of the total, with revenue in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) growing 24% over the prior-year period and accounting for 10% of total revenue.

HP’s Enterprise Storage and Servers (ESS) segment reported revenue of $4.7 billion, up 5% over the prior-year period while Personal Systems Group (PSG) revenue grew 15% to $10.3 billion and Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) was up 3% to $7 billion.

For its current fiscal fourth quarter, HP put out an optimistic outlook. The company expects fiscal Q4 revenue of $30.2 billion-$30.3 billion and earnings per share of 95 cents to 97 cents.

As things get better and better at HP, things are worsening at Sun. On August 1 when Sun put out its crappy fourth quarter results, Sun warned that its Q1 (the company’s current quarter) revenues would be down and that it would not report a profit on GAAP basis.

The difference between HP and Sun is the difference between a well-managed company with talented employees and a strong product portfolio (HP) and a poorly-managed company with incompetent schmucks and a lousy product line across servers, storage and software (Sun).