This Morning: Dell’s Dividend Appreciated, Lackluster Juniper

Here are some things going on this morning in your world of tech:

Shares of Dell (DELL) are up 45 cents, or 3.8%, at $12.42 following the company’s announcement yesterday afternoon at its analyst day event that it will institute a dividend of 2.7%.

The response from Dell analysts this morning is largely favorable. Keith Bachman of BMO Capital writes that Dell may have $4.4 billion in free cash flow in the calendar year 2013. “Some portion of the dividend payments will come at the expense of buy back,” he writes. “We believe the company will continue to make M&A deals in the $1 billion type of range, and thus will likely need to raise some type of financing (with most of cash overseas) to complete such deals.”

Shares of Facebook�(FB) are up 49 cents, or 1.8%, at $27.89, as The Wall Street Journal’s Shayndi Raice�writes this morning that yesterday’s release of a white paper by research firm comScore, which had been hinted at the week prior, was part of Facebook’s PR blitz to try and reverse the negative impression of its advertising business that has arisen. Yesterday was the end of the quiet period following Facebook’s IPO filing, notes Raice, so the company is now free to say more promotional things about its business.

Shares of Juniper Networks (JNPR) are down 3 cents at $16.58 after the company yesterday “hit the reset button,” as analysts put it, cutting its revenue growth target over “the long term” to a range of 9% to 12% from 20%-plus previously. The company also cut its gross margin target to 63% to 66% from 65-67%.

Analysts seemed to be taking this as pretty much what they expected. As Glenn Hanus of Needham & Co., who has a Hold rating on the shares, wrote this morning, ” We think they are prudent in this reset of the business model, and we think the long ramp is more consistent with our prior concerns.”

If you were excited by the “PureView” 41-megapixel camera phone that Nokia (NOK) showed off during the Mobile World Congress show back in February, you may be even more excited to learn that the company plans to bring the technology to future versions of its phones based on Microsoft‘s (MSFT) “Windows Phone” software. At least, that’s the comment from a Nokia representative offered this morning to The Verge’s Tom Warren. Nokia shares are down 7 cents, or 2.4%, at $2.80 this morning.