NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Dell Computer Corp. on Thursday logged a fiscal second-quarter profit that was in line with the forecast provided last month and said shipments of new computer systems continued to rise.

And executives of the computer hardware heavyweight also raised the bar for the current quarter, forecasting another improvement in unit shipments.

"Dell's volumes are expected to increase more than 5 percent sequentially," Jim Schneider, Dell's chief financial officer, said on a conference call.

The improvements in Dell's overall shipments will be driven in large part by improvements in government spending on computer systems as well as in Europe and in certain segments of the U.S. business market, Schneider said.

Shipments near the end of the third quarter, which ends in October, also should get a boost from increased demand during the back-to-school and pre-holiday season, Schneider said.

Dell is aiming for third-quarter revenue of $8.9 billion. That would be an 18.6 percent increase over the $7.5 billion the company logged during last year's third quarter and is more than most company watchers recently had been expecting. At last count, analysts polled by First Call had forecast Dell's third-quarter revenue nearer $8.6 billion.

Shares of Dell rose 6 cents to $27.20 in extended-hours trade after falling a penny on Nasdaq during the regular session.

"It is certainly a bullish outlook. Maybe the U.S. corporate market is reaching a state of stabilization, which is potentially a good thing for more people than just Dell," said Marty Shagrin, an analyst at Victory Capital, which owns Dell shares.

After the close of trading, Dell said it earned $501 million, or 19 cents per share, during the quarter ended Aug. 2. That compares with a profit, excluding one-time charges, of $433 million, or 16 cents per share, in the same period last year.

At $8.4 billion, Dell's second-quarter revenue rose 11 percent from the $7.6 billion it logged in the year-ago period.

On July 11, Dell pre-announced the quarter's results, telling investors to expect a profit of 19 cents per share and revenue of $8.3 billion.

The Round Rock, Texas-based company said its total shipments rose 18 percent in the quarter, led by increases in sales of servers and workstations. Dell also said that those products, as well as data-storage systems, accounted for 20 percent of its revenue in the second quarter.

While most of Dell's revenue still is derived from personal computers, the company in recent quarters has been locking in on other, more profitable product areas such as servers, data-storage and networking hardware.

The company also is planning to begin making printers as well as handheld computers, also called personal digital assistants, or PDAs.

Michael Dell, the company's founder and chairman, declined to provide specifics about the products the company is planning to introduce or the time frame. He did say that Dell is looking at both ink jet as well as laser printers.

"It's not the right time to do it now, but stay tuned," Dell said.

Like most other technology companies, Dell is still being affected by continued weakness in corporate technology spending, and it's still waiting for the rebound.

Still, the company has stood out among its competitors as one of the few to actually gain share in its core markets. It also has been able to maintain profitability and hit its financial targets while many of its competitors have disappointed investors with their quarterly results.

Much of that has been achieved through cost cutting. As have most other computer hardware makers, Dell has cut jobs, laying off more than 5,700 employees since early 2001.

Rollins said Dell is ahead of plans for more than $1 billion in total cost improvements this year from product design, manufacturing and logistics, operating expenses and warranty costs.

Executives of Dell also attribute some of their recent success to customers defecting from Hewlett-Packard and Compaq after their merger earlier this year.

Although he would not be specific, Dell said the company has "a long list" of new contract wins as a result of lingering customer concerns about the integration of HP and Compaq's operations.  

-- Reuters contributed to this report