This Morning: MSFT Rising, Pesky AAPL Headlines, KLAC Surges

Here are some things going on this morning in your world of tech:

Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) are up 49 cents, or 1.7%, at $28.12 after the company last night slightly missed revenue estimates and beat on the bottom line by a penny in its fiscal Q1 report.

The Street this morning is adjusting estimates slightly, with no major changes up or down. Walter Pritchard with Citigroup reiterates a Buy rating and a $35 price target, writing that his math suggests the company sold about 700,000 to 800,000 of its Surface tablet computer. He thinks the “worst on the PC front may be behind the company.”

In other Microsoft news, following reports last night that the company’s partner Nokia (NOK) was number ten in smartphone sales last quarter, running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 software, DigiTimes’s Daniel Shen and Steve Shen this morning write that Redmond is working with Qualcomm (QCOM) on a “reference design” for future Windows-based phones at lower prices for the Chinese market, citing multiple unnamed sources.

Shares of chip maker Cirrus Logic (CRUS) are up $2.17, or 8%, at $28.88 after the supplier of audio chips for Apple‘s (AAPL) iPhone and iPad last night reported a better-than-expected Q4 but offered an outlook for the current quarter below expectations. Cannacord Genuity’s Bobby Burleson reiterates a Buy rating today while lowering his price target to $35 from a prior $52, writing that the uncertainty around demand for Apple’s iPhone 5 will weigh on Cirrus’s business.

Speaking of Apple (AAPL), the stock is down 67 cents today at $449.83, as the company gets hit with some negative news pieces this morning. The Wall Street Journal’s Scott Thurm late yesterday penned an item strikingly similar to the one penned in Barron’s print magazine this past weekend by my colleague Vito Racanelli. The piece notes how stocks hit a ceiling at around $500 billion in market cap, which they have a hard time getting past. The Journal’s Digits column features a piece by Juro Osawa about Huawei challenging Apple and Samsung Electronics in the smartphone market. And The New York Post’s Garett Sloane this morning writes that AT&T’s (T) CEO Randall Stephenson said on the company’s Q4 conference call last night that he is studying T-Mobile’s practice of removing subsidies for the iPhone by letting customers pay for the device over time.

Not that it would matter to Apple how the phone is paid for, but headlines like “Bad Apple Allergy” certainly are not a help to the shares on any given day.

Shares of chip equipment maker KLA-Tencor (KLAC) are up $4.95, or almost 10%, at $56.92, after the company last night beat fiscal Q2 estimates and offered a better-than-expected outlook for this quarter. The company said foundry customers are spending on equipment in a decent fashion. And the report later in the evening by Samsung that it will maintain capital spending about the same this year is giving a lift to chip equipment companies.