This has been a relatively good week for tech stocks. Most tech stocks have been dragged down in recent weeks on dour market sentiment, but saw strong recoveries this week as a comprehensive European debt plan looks in the offing. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) were up about 5% while Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) outpaced them up around 15%. Here are some of the major developments related to these stocks, which should have a significant impact on their stocks going forward.
Microsoft
Microsoft is one of those companies which is always in the news. This week, it was revealed that Microsoft was working on the next version of the Kinect motion gaming add-on for the Xbox 360, which would come with improved motion sensing and voice recognition capabilities as well as lip reading and emotion gauging features. Rumors also suggested that Microsoft was planning to integrate Kinect with TVs.
It is also working to launch Microsoft Office for the iPad. Apps for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote will reportedly be priced at $10 each, much lower than the Office suite. It also announced a service update for Office 365, its cloud based Office offering, and launched it in 22 new markets. It also upgraded the SkyDrive cloud storage service adding additional sharing, file management and upload features.
Finally, the Xbox 360 saw the best sales week in its history, thanks to Black Friday. Microsoft sold over 960,000 Xbox 360 units, and nearly 750,000 units of the Kinect.
Xbox, Kinect & Zune account for nearly 8% of Microsoft’s $32 Trefis price estimate, while Office accounts for around 30%.
Check out our complete analysis of Microsoft
Adobe
Adobe had a very eventful week too. It added Kindle Fire publishing support to its Digital Publishing Suite and also moved to expand its share in the digital marketing space. It announced that it will integrate digital marketing technology from SEO (search engine platform) provider BrightEdge with Adobe’s SiteCatalyst web analytics, to support organic and paid search engine marketing campaigns.
It also acquired Efficient Frontier, a leading ad buying and optimization platform, to add multi-channel ad campaign forecasting, execution and optimization capabilities to Adobe’s existing Digital Marketing offering. The acquisition adds a social marketing and analytics platform to Adobe’s digital marketing arsenal.
Web Analytics software accounts for nearly 8% of Adobe’s $35 Trefis price estimate.
Check out our complete analysis of Adobe
Salesforce.com
After buying Model Metrics, a cloud computing consulting and services company, Salesforce.com was in the news again this week, for launching the Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud. It had acquired Radian6 back in March 2011. The Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud enables companies to monitor their social presence on networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube etc. and leverage it to interact and engage with their customers, and create intelligent marketing campaigns. It will integrate with Salesforce.com’s Sales and Service Cloud offerings.
Cloud-based customer service and other cloud products account for almost 90% of Salesforce.com’s $121 Trefis price estimate.
Check out our complete analysis of Salesforce.com
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