Though the technology sector is no longer the safe haven it seemed as the economy began stumbling last summer, investors are clinging to hopes that the industry’s first wave of first-quarter reports will continue to demonstrate a touch of resilience against the gloom.

Intel: The opening ceremonies, and possibly the fireworks, begin Apr. 15 with Intel’s results from the first three months of 2008. The semiconductor company rattled nerves Mar. 3 with a warning about weakness in its memory chip business. Revising its profit forecasts downward, Intel blamed weak demand at its NAND flash venture with Micron Technologies. As a result, the company said it would be forced to write down the value of its NAND inventory.

Intel also cautioned that its gross margins, a widely watched measure of profitability, would come in at about 54 percent, down two percentage points from prior forecasts. On average, analysts are expecting Intel to report first-quarter revenue of about $9.6 billion to $9.7 billion with earnings of 25 percent per share. “The question is how much the writedown will affect earnings and whether or not it was enough to allow gross margins to rise for the balance of the year,” says analyst Doug Freedman of American Technology Research.

Analysts are somewhat split over what to expect from Intel’s computer chip business. Freedman, for example, is expecting strong guidance from Intel on the PC front, whereas Edwin Mok of Needham & Co. says that warnings from Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices indicate a weaker than usual environment for computer sales that can’t help but hit Intel’s guidance going into the second quarter. Chris Danely of JPMorgan, in a research note issued Apr. 10, said that gains by Intel with PC maker Dell were largely offset by losses to AMD at Hewlett-Packard.

Apple: Apple, which only uses Intel…