Ten Big Tech Stocks That Have Outperformed Apple This Year

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 5, 5:40AM EDT · Published Apr 4, 12:57PM EDT

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There are ten major technology stocks that have outperformed Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) this year. Apple’s earnings will be announced shortly, and although some analysts are still raising earnings estimates and stock price targets, the market is not giving them support.

The stocks that have done better than Apple in 2011 have a common feature. They provide the software and hardware that make the internet and tech infrastructure run. None of them owns content, and none of them make consumer electronics devices or smartphones.

Apple’s shares are up 7% in 2011.

1. IBM (NYSE: IBM) is 10%. higher. Investors have faith that the world’s largest tech company measured by sales has an advantage beyond the current economic rebound. IBM has a broader portfolio of enterprise hardware, software, and services than any other US based company.

2. Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) is up 91%. This company suffered through five years of merger woes, but it is now a successful provider of enterprise products to the world’s large telecom companies.

3. Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is up 9%. Larry Ellison has merged his way to make Oracle the largest enterprise technology company in the world. At its core, the corporation is a database management operation, but it has branched into fast growing services like virtualization.

4. Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is up 19%. The firm makes graphics chips for PC and portable electronics devices. Wall St. likes the company because of its move toward supplying processors for smartphones like the iPhone.

5. SAP (NYSE: SAP) is up 22%. Oracle’s major competitor has struggled with management and product release problems, but the growth tech spending by large enterprises has pulled it out of a slump.

6. Level 3 (NASDAQ: LVLT) is up 50%. The largest provider of dumb internet pipes has been helped recently by the need to send more data and video over IP.

7. Micron Technologies (NYSE: MU) is higher by 40%. Micron designs chips for data processing and storage and flash memory products.

8. Ciena (NASDAQ: CIEN) is up by 42%. Ciena makes enterprise networking products and infrastructure switches

9. JD Uniphase (NASDAQ: JDSU) is higher by 32%. The firm makes optical products for telecom companies, measurement testing products, and data and cable products.

10. Sprint-Nextel (NYSE: S) is higher by 9% and it does not even sell the iPhone. Be the network and not the device on the network.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.