By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Gains from Adobe Systems
Inc.,Twitter Inc. and chipmaker ARM Holdings grabbed attention on
Friday as the tech sector looked to close out the week on an upbeat
note.
Twitter (TWTR) rose almost 4% to $57.20 a share. On Friday,
Twitter reversed course on a new feature that let people block
other users. The feature would have let blocked users still follow,
and reply to messages from the person who had blocked them. Twitter
cited concerns about its users being harassed by blocked users as
the main reason it was dropping the new function.
Adobe (ADBE) was a big gainer, as its shares rose 10%, to
$59.37, in the wake of the company's fiscal fourth-quarter results,
which came out late Thursday. Adobe said its earnings and sales
were down from the year-ago period, but its $1.04 billion in
revenue exceeded the $1.03 billion forecast by analysts surveyed by
FactSet. Subscription-based revenue rose 85% from the year-ago
period to $359.7 million, and Adobe also reported 402,000 new
Creative Cloud subscriptions during the quarter.
Chipmaker ARM Holdings (ARMHY) rose more than 3% to $49.30
following reports that the company may be close to a chip-making
deal with Google Inc. (GOOG). Bloomberg reported Friday that Google
is considering making its own server chips, and could use
technology from ARM for the processors.
Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) rose 42 cents a share after the
communications chipmaker said Chief Operating Officer Steve
Mollenkopf would become the company's chief executive in March.
Mollenkopf had been mentioned as a possible CEO candidate to
replace Steve Ballmer at Microsoft Corp. (MSFT).
Videogame publisher Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) saw its shares
rise more than 7%, to $22.49, following a report from NPD Group
that said U.S. sales of videogame hardware rose 58% in November
from a year ago, to $1.33 billion.
The Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) edged up 4 points to 4,002,
and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) was also in positive
territory.
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