Tech Stocks Inch Up Behind Strong Gains From AMD And 3COM (HP, COMS, AMD, INTC, GOOG)

The Nasdaq Composite Index inched higher as it rose 0.17% with tech stocks having a particularly busy day today. Pacing tech stocks today, Hewlett Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) dropped slightly by 0.26% to $49.68 as they announced plans to buy networking company 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) . With the announcement 3Com Corporation shot up to almost 32% to $7.50 a share.

HP’s acquisition is said to be a direct reaction to the proposed joint venture between computer networking companies Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) , EMC (NYSE: EMC) , and (NYSE: VMW) announced the early part of November. Prior to the acquisition of 3Com, Hewlett Packard has already been hacking away at Cisco’s market share with their new product line.

This competition between HP and Cisco is reminiscent of the recent takeover bid of Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) by Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) , which has led to concerns from the technology community. German Software Company, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) has expressed their concerns to the European Union on the availability of other database software.

Also on Tech stock news, Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) or AMD has come to an agreement with Microprocessor Giant, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), to settle all outstanding legal disputes from anti-trust allegation and issues in patent licensing. In their settlement, Intel Corporation will pay $1.25 billion to AMD as part of their settlement agreement. With the settlement news, AMD and Intel shares both went up 22.37% and 0.44% respectively.

In other Tech Stock news, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) was one of the main focus of investors asking why Google was the only investor who did not inject in additional funds to Clearwire Corporation (NASDAQ: CLWR) . Some believe that it is because of the new development deal that Google has with Verizon (NYSE: VZ) , a direct competitor of Clearwire. Sprint (NYSE: S) is one of the highest contributors to Clearwire. Google was up 40 cents or 0.07%.