Seagate and Western Digital BATTLE for Top Spot and 4 Chip and Big Data Stocks on the Move

QUALCOMM Incorporated (NASDAQ:QCOM): On Friday, The Competition Commission approved the merger of four broadband wireless business entities that are jointly owned by US-based telecom giant Qualcomm and domestic major Bharti Airtel.  As for the proposed merger, Qualcomm’s BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) entities in Delhi, Kerala and Haryana are to be merged with Wireless Business Services Pvt Ltd, which has been provided licenses for BWA (high-speed internet) services in these three states and in Mumbai. Although Qualcomm owns 51 per cent stake in each of these four companies, the remaining 49 per cent equity is with Bharti Airtel. The shares traded up $0.02 (0.03%) recently at $61.22.

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Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX) lost its leadership position on the market of hard disk drives during Q2 of 2012 to WD, it could regain it during Q3, according to analysts from IHS iSuppli. The market research company believes that 157 Million hard drives were shippped last quarter with nearly 87 percent by Seagate and Western Digital. The shares traded down $0.26 (0.81%) recently at $31.95.

SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK): Despite how low SNDK’s debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23 is, it is now higher than that of the industry average. Also, SNDK possesses a quick ratio of 1.72, demonstrating the company’s ability to cover short-term liquidity needs.  The shares traded up $0.07 (0.17%) recently at $41.10.

Western Digital Corp. (NYSE:WDC) seems to be on the path to recovery after floods in Thailand last year, which cause issues in the hard drive market that have not been entirely controled yet. Market intelligence firm IHS iSuppli claims that Western Digital retook the lead from Seagate in the global hard drive market during the 2012′s Q2 with nearly 71 million HDD units produced. The shares traded down $0.34 (0.81%) recently at $41.76.

VMware, Inc.’s (NYSE:VMW) virtual servers are machines existing only as software. The Palo Alto, California, outfit made a name for itself by offering software that allowed big business save money and space by slotting a great deal of these virtual machines onto a single physical server. Currently, it wishes to reinvent networking a similar way. Nicira is involved in virtual networks, which take the brains out of networking hardware and places them into software, which makes it easier to build and maintain the large collection of machines underpinning the modern business. The shares traded up $0.27 (0.31%) recently at $88.78.

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