(Reuters) –
Nvidia shares soared 15 percent on Wednesday, their biggest one-day rise
in over two years, as investors bet the company’s new chips would win
it a major stake in future tablets and smartphones.
The rise in Nvidia’s stock
brought its gain since the company’s debut last week of its new Tegra 2
dual-core mobile chips to about 50 percent.
Wedbush analyst Patrick Wang said the stock was "trading purely on momentum at this point."
He
said he had been taking calls from clients to help them estimate how
large an impact Nvidia’s mobile chips could make on the market.
Nvidia’s
new chips, boasting powerful graphics processing horsepower, give it a
lead but competition is expected to increase from Qualcomm and Texas
Instruments.
"Look for all of
Nvidia’s competitors to come out and throw their hats in as well," Wang
said. "You’ve got very large, powerful technology companies that are all
going for the same market."
Micron
Technology Inc shares rose 7.1 percent to $9.34 after investor
relations vice president Kipp Bedard told investors at a Needham &
Company conference that a downturn in prices for DRAM memory chips was
turning around quickly.
Shares of
Cisco, Dell and other technology heavyweights also rose ahead of
bellwether Intel’s kick-off of the technology sector’s quarterly earnings season on Thursday.
Major
technology companies are expected to keep up sales and profit growth in
2011, although concerns about economic growth in the United States and
Europe could temper results.