The release of second generation of iPad has lead the rise in number of stocks. Firstly, of course the company itself, Apple (AAPL), closing at $359.56, a jump of more than 2 percent from 2 March closing price. The appearance of Steve Jobs in this major product release, although he still looked weak, but that might have boast the confidence of investors, and destroyed the rumor of his dying condition.
A year ago, iPad received a rather bad justification from the industry when it was announced; The industry don't see the need of having a device that categorized between a PC and mobile phone. People think that might be the end of Steve Job's innovative gadget. BUT, today, we have seen how popular this device is; the other big brothers, like Samsung, HP, Motorola start targeting this new category, and we will see more tablet coming soon in 2011. In the meantime, the netbook category might have started falling out of favor by the industry.
The release of iPad 2 and Verizon iPhone 4 have brought a great fortune for their component suppliers as well. Qualcomm (QCOM), the provider of iPad and iPhone baseband chip, rose to $58.84, up around 3 percent. With now the support of both GSM and CDMA networks, the dual-switch baseband chip definitely provides a great revenue to Qualcomm. Next we have Cirrus Logic (CRUS); it closed at $24.98, rise more than 7 percent. This usage of this audio chip was first revealed in the tear down report of iPhone 4, since then its share is in the rising trend. The company has their audio chips in both iPad and iPhone product lines and foresee the company will continue grow fast with their largest customer. Lastly, the NAND flash provider of iPad and iPhone, Micron (MU). After struggling for a couple of years, the Micron finally return to profit in the last quarter. The NAND flash as well as the memory chips in MacBook series will continue driving more profit for the company. In fact, Seeking Alpha recently pointed out that shares are among the cheapest in the semiconductor arena. Micron closed at $11.57, went up more than 4 percent from previous day's close.
All the 4 stocks are traded close to their 52 weeks' high, and traded slightly above 20 SMA. Should unrest in Middle East and Africa relieve and better economic outlook, these stocks will continue to rise.
