Apple Among First-Quarter Winners, Microsoft Among The Losers

The first quarter is coming to an end this week so it presents an occasion to look at Q1's winners and losers throughout the technology industry. There are many different ways to pick, but let's go by stock price performance for now.

The winners:

Apple Its shares have jumped from $86.29 to $93.24 in the first quarter. And just think: the iPhone and Leopard version of the Mac OS haven't even launched yet.

Novell Its stock price is up about 12 percent for the quarter and the company is quietly making inroads in the Linux space while minimizing fallout from its alliance with Microsoft.

Oracle Shares of the software vendor jumped by about five percent during the first quarter on good earnings and acquisitions.

Sun Microsystems The company has quietly been laying the foundation for a business that is both hardware- and software-agnostic, with its new alliance with Intel, its continuing relationship with AMD, and the continuing game of footsie it is playing with the open source community. Sun's stock price is up about 10 percent during the quarter. Think IBM 10 years ago.

The losers:

IBM Think IBM 15 years ago. It doesn't have a PC business, it's getting out of the printing business and its Chairman and CEO is getting skimpy on the public appearances. Oh, and its share price is down about three percent during the quarter.

Hewlett-Packard People are still talking about HP as a great turnaround company, but is it still a great turnaround stock? Its shares are down about four percent during the quarter -- after previously showing aggressive gains as Chairman and CEO Mark Hurd revamped the business and channel strategy. What's causing the slump? Blowback from its channel incentive program? Fear that its price cutting may be just a bit too bloody? This one may take another quarter or two to fully play out.

Dell Cut and paste everything that's been written about Dell since last August and put it here. Its shares, already battered last year, have dropped another seven percent during the first quarter.

Microsoft If you invested in Microsoft when it first went public, and held onto the stock, you'd be very rich today. If you invested in Microsoft at the start of the year, right before the Vista launch, your investment would be worth about eight percent less. Nobody is calling Vista a bomb, but compared to other operating system launches it might be called a "late bloomer." Either way, Microsoft is in the "loser" column for the first quarter.

AMD All you need to know about AMD's quarter was that the only good bump in its stock price came when rumors surfaced about a potential private equity investment or buyout. The company has pre-announced it would fall short of previous earnings expectations and some analysts are starting to question its cash position. Shares of AMD's stock have plummeted in value by about 35 percent during the first quarter.