This week the action starts to heat up in the technology sector, with some of the big boys stepping up to the plate to present numbers for the first quarter. A new research note from UBS also mentions the fact that on Friday the first Apple Watch shipment numbers will come out.

While the UBS team says some out-of-favor stocks like International Business Machine Corp. (NYSE: IBM) may appeal to contrarian investors, they are sticking with market leaders that could be poised to report good earnings, or at the minimum not throw out a huge downside surprise. Here are the top IT tech hardware stocks to buy now at UBS: Akamai Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and Nimble Storage Inc. (NASDAQ: NMBL).

Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies is one of the leading providers of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications. About half of Akamai’s revenues are from media delivery (delivery of content) over the Internet using the company’s 135,000 server global edge network and software, for which demand is driven by video delivery and software downloads. Akamai is the leading provider of website optimization and acceleration services to e-commerce companies, a key reason for making the UBS list.

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The UBS price target for the stock is $80. The Thomson/First Call consensus price target is set at $73.89. The stock ended Friday’s trading session at $71.90 a share. Akamai reports earnings on April 28.

Apple

Apple remains the world’s biggest and boldest technology company, and it has stayed in the limelight with the release of the new Apple Watch. As the UBS team pointed out, the first data on shipments will be out this Friday. While not generating the kind of in-store mania the iPhone 6 release did, reports indicate over a million orders for the new wearable device were taken by the company.

Many Wall Street analysts say investors need to stay long the stock into first-quarter earnings and through the second quarter. They see strong continued iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales, as well as numerous catalysts on the horizon. The company is also widening its lead over Google in the app marketplace. In fact, revenue at Apple’s global App Store was about 70% higher than on Google Play in the first quarter, compared with about a 60% advantage in the third quarter of 2014.

Apple investors are paid a 1.5% dividend. The UBS price target is $142. The consensus target is at $139.95. The stock closed Friday at $124.75. Apple reports earnings on April 27.

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EMC

While its stock trades at an incredibly low 14.5 estimated adjusted 2015 earnings, versus 15.1 for 2014, the company is the leader in storage, and the constant increase in data makes the stock a core holding for technology investors. EMC missed revenue estimates for the fourth quarter and just squeaked by on the bottom line, beating estimates by a penny.

With the company expected to buy back $3 billion of stock in 2015, and the lower VMware numbers baked into future calculations, now may be a good time to add shares of this outstanding technology stock. EMC owns 80% of the cloud software company, and activist investors have urged a spin-off, which does not seem likely in the near future.

Some analysts on Wall Street think the company could miss first-quarter projections and lower the full-year numbers due to currency headwinds. With the stock having already sold off significantly since the analyst day announcements, and if they stay in line with current projections, the stock should remain flat to up. It acted very good Friday during the massive sell-off.

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EMC investors are paid a 1.75% dividend. The UBS price objective is $31, and the consensus target is slightly lower at $30.35. Shares closed up on Friday at $26.61. EMC reports earnings on April 22.

Hewlett-Packard

This old-school tech stock has been sold off hard as investors feel that the slowdown in personal computer (PC) sales could continue to hurt earnings. In fact, the stock is down a whopping 20% year to date and trades at a very low 8.9 times 2015 estimated earnings. Some Wall Street analysts feel that weak PC demand could continue to negatively impact revenue and free cash flow at the company. The recent decline in the stock may represent investors already discounting a weak first quarter from the Silicon Valley icon. HP does a large 65% of sales to foreign accounts, and the dollar could be topping out after a long run.

The server business is where many top analysts on Wall Street are bullish, and by adding in the firm’s very solid printer business, investors may be well advised to look at this stock at current lower trading levels.

HP investors are paid a 2.2% dividend. UBS has a very solid $40 price target for the stock, and the consensus target is posted at $40.40. Shares closed Friday at $32.53. The company reports earnings in May.

Nimble Storage

Nimble Storage made its IPO debut back in December of 2013 and has been crushed back to right around the original offering price, after doubling early last year. Nimble has developed a hybrid storage architecture engineered from the ground up to seamlessly integrate flash and high-capacity drives. Nimble’s flash storage solutions enable the consolidation of all workloads and eliminate storage silos by providing enterprises with significant improvements in application performance and storage capacity.

Nimble has shown outstanding growth as more than 5,000 enterprises, governments and service providers have deployed the company’s flash storage solutions across 38 countries. According to its latest financial report, fourth-quarter revenues were up 64% year-over-year to $68.3 million, and fiscal year 2015 revenues were $228 million, up 81% year-over-year.

The UBS price target is $40, and consensus target is lower at $35.17. The stock closed Friday at $24.59 a share. The company reports earnings in late May.

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With the exception of Nimble, the UBS team is playing a smart hand by staying with large cap leaders. With the first quarter maybe the toughest this year, investors could always buy partial position in front of earnings.

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