Amid the stream of apocalyptic news concerning wars, natural disasters and macroeconomic meltdown, the tech sector provided us with some welcome positive news last week.
While nobody was surprised to hear that Apple sold another boat-load of gadgets, it still managed to beat analyst expectations with a near-doubling of profits to $6 billion. Apple's cash pile is now thought to be in the region of $67 billion, meaning it could theoretically afford to buy Nokia and Dell without even having to trouble the bank manager.
And this was despite not selling as many iPads as analysts thought they would, leading to the stable door being shut in the form of tablet market downward revisions.
Apple's fortunes were boosted mainly by huge sales of the iPhone, and mobile chip giant Qualcomm also benefitted from big smartphone sales. But despite still being a bystander in the smartphone game, Intel also surprised investors by doing what it does best: selling a ton of PC chips. AMD fared reasonably well too.
| Company | Listing | Share price 4/4/11 | Share price 11/4/11 | Share price 18/4/11 | Share price 25/4/11 | 7-day change | Market cap (bn) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD | AMD | 8.36 | 8.47 | 8.27 | 8.71 | 5.3% | 5.98 |
| Apple | AAPL | 344.56 | 335.06 | 327.46 | 350.70 | 7.1% | 323.09 |
| ARM | ARMH | 27.92 | 28.52 | 29.28 | 31.03 | 6.0% | 13.92 |
| Avnet | AVT | 33.64 | 34.26 | 33.30 | 34.85 | 4.7% | 5.30 |
| Cisco | CSCO | 17.04 | 17.65 | 17.03 | 16.94 | -0.5% | 93.64 |
| Dell | DELL | 14.34 | 14.57 | 14.92 | 15.27 | 2.3% | 29.12 |
| GOOG | 591.80 | 578.16 | 530.70 | 525.10 | -1.1% | 168.83 | |
| HP | HPQ | 40.98 | 40.70 | 40.26 | 40.99 | 1.8% | 88.70 |
| IBM | IBM | 164.27 | 164.05 | 166.21 | 168.28 | 1.2% | 205.22 |
| Ingram Micro | IM | 20.91 | 21.09 | 20.05 | 20.91 | 4.3% | 3.33 |
| Intel | INTC | 19.72 | 20.02 | 19.75 | 21.46 | 8.7% | 115.57 |
| Microsoft | MSFT | 25.48 | 26.07 | 25.37 | 25.52 | 0.6% | 214.43 |
| Nokia | NOK | 8.55 | 9.02 | 8.66 | 8.63 | -0.3% | 32.79 |
| Nvidia | NVDA | 18.20 | 17.55 | 18.71 | 18.52 | -1.0% | 11.02 |
| Oracle | ORCL | 34.02 | 33.54 | 34.18 | 34.75 | 1.7% | 175.85 |
| Qualcomm | QCOM | 54.47 | 53.63 | 53.14 | 56.94 | 7.2% | 93.59 |
| Tech Data | TECD | 50.98 | 52.29 | 51.43 | 52.51 | 2.1% | 2.46 |
| Dow | .DJI | 12376.72 | 12380.05 | 12341.83 | 12505.99 | 1.3% | N/A |
| FTSE 100 | .FTSE | 6009.92 | 6055.75 | 5996.01 | 6018.30 | 0.4% | N/A |
| NASDAQ | .IXIC | 2789.60 | 2780.42 | 2764.65 | 2820.16 | 2.0% | N/A |
