HEXUS.sharewatch: ARM has a big week

The most notable mover in last week's HEXUS.sharewatch was phone chip giant Qualcomm, which has been punished by investors for a recent conservative revenue forecast. Sentiment has apparently reversed since then, with semiconductor companies and those involved in the mobile Internet among the biggest gainers.

The semiconductor company that lies at the heart of the mobile Internet is UK low-power chip designer ARM, which saw its shares jump 13.7 percent last week. There was no single piece of news to explain this, although the apparent foundering of Intel's special relationship with TSMC might have contributed. So this seems more of a general punt on the growth of the mobile Internet.

Other semiconductor companies to have a good week were AMD, NVIDIA and Qualcomm, the latter two both having a big stake in the mobile Internet with flagship low-power chips Tegra and Snapdragon, respectively.

Of course Apple is a semiconductor company now too and it, apart from possibly Google, is the company that is being most aggressive in its pursuit of the mobile Internet market. Both of these two also had good weeks, in contrast to two tech giants viewed as playing catch-up in this market: Microsoft and Intel.