3 September 12 18:52–Investors went into the long Labor Day weekend after closing a third successive month of rises. The Nasdaq index is the strongest riser so far this year, up 18%, and was the best performer in August too, rising by more than 4%, mainly thanks to Apple (AAPL). Apple rose by more than 9% in August, in advance of the new iPhone launch in the next quarter, and also because of the victory in the patent case against Samsung at the end of the month.

As every year, the return to work after the summer break will be crowded with events. In the four business days starting from tomorrow, we will have launches, announcements, and a large technology company conference in New York. The conference is organized by Citi (C), and from it we will learn about developments in the third quarter, as we enter its final third. On Wednesday, in New York, Nokia (NOK) will unveil its new smartphones. They will be based on what is considered a very promising operating system, Microsoft’s Windows 8, and will reach the market in late October, in time for the Christmas shopping season.

Many see this as just about the last chance for Nokia and Microsoft to take a substantial chunk of a huge, growing and profitable market of a billion smartphones a year, currently dominated by Apple and Samsung.

Still in New York, at the same time as Nokia, Motorola, for the first time as part of Google (GOOG), will launch two new smartphones for Verizon’s high-speed LTE network. And if that is not enough, on the US West Coast, Amazon is holding an event on Thursday at which it is believed it will unveil new Kindles.

There will also be an important Israeli announcement this week. On Wednesday, EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. (Nasdaq: EZCH; TASE:EZCH) will hold a special call with analysts and investors to give details of the line of new network processors it began work on two years ago. For the past two years, the company has succeeded in keeping secret what it was developing, and there is not a single analyst, or expert in the field, who knows what the new network processors are meant for not even technology guru George Gilder, who discovered EZchip’s great potential. Twelve years ago, he revealed the company in a big way to Wall Street investors, and since then he has met its managers here and over there several times a year…Read More>>

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