MIDDAY MARKETS: Earnings news boosts techs

A slew of quarterly reports and a few mergers was driving the Nasdaq at midday Monday. The Nasdaq rose 28.77 to 4274.95 and the Dow Jones industrial average slipped 40.65 to 10,772.10.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 7 to 550.13.

Fiber-optic equipment maker Corning (NYSE: GLW) rose 15 1/4 to 282 1/4 after reporting earnings of $271.1 million, or 94 cents a share.

Silicon Image (Nasdaq: SIMG) fell 3 39/64 to 67 45/64 after it matched earnings estimates and set a 2-for-1 stock split.

Mercator Software (Nasdaq: MCTR) tumbled 37 7/16 to 25 3/16, or 60 percent Monday after it issued a second quarter profit warning. The company also said it has a new CFO.

Ebookers.com (Nasdaq: EBKR), up 2 11/16 to 9 3/16, a European online travel specialist, announced second quarter results and said it will reach profitability ahead of schedule.

Internet valuations are starting to look like a deal to old media companies; KnightRidder.com and Tribune Company said they plan to buy CareerBuilder (Nasdaq: CBDR), up 3 19/32 to 7 23/32, and CareerPath.com.

Other big movers included Veritcal Net (Nasdaq: VERT), up 7 1/4 to 58 3/8, or 14 percent after Goldman Sachs analyst Jamie Friedman placed the business-to-business e-nabler on the "recommended for purchase list," and Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM), which shot up 6 3/4 to 69 13/16 on news European patent offices upheld the validity of three of its patents covering key features of its Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology.

With AMD (NYSE: AMD), up 13/16 to 90 13/16, and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), down 1 3/8 to 145 5/16, reporting earnings this week, industry pundits are divided over whether or not a slowdown in the chip market is looming.

Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) gained 4 5/16 to 132 5/16 and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) losst 29/64 to 42 3/64 and AOL (NYSE: AOL) rose 1/4 to 62 5/16.

Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) was up 3/4 to 69, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) fell 1 1/4 to 77 11/16, Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW)gained 1 1/2 to 96 7/16 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) dropped 1 1/4 to 74 7/8.