Facebook, Google, RIM: Tech Winners & Losers

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Facebook (FB) shares suffered on Wednesday after analysts issued mixed reviews of the social network's ability to generate revenue.

Morgan Stanley (MS), the lead underwriter of Facebook's recent IPO, initiated coverage of the company, rating shares "overweight" with a $38 price target.

"We believe that Facebook is uniquely positioned to leverage its large and highly-engaged user base to monetize the mobile Internet," explained Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt in his note. "Facebook is executing against three key priorities: aggregation, product initiatives, and monetization."

Facebook stock slumped 2.63% in Wednesday trade to close at $32.23. Since going public, shares have lost 15.18%.

Zynga (ZNGA) slipped 2.86% to $5.60 on Wednesday following a disappointing press event on Tuesday. At the company's "Unleashed" event, the social gaming company announced new games in the pipeline, a new social network and opened up its platform to developers.

The Ville, part of the same franchise as Zynga's flagship game, Farmville, was released on Wednesday.

Google (GOOG) announced its own tablet, the Nexus 7, on Wednesday, driving shares up 0.85% to $569.47 alongside the NASDAQ.

The Google-branded tablet will feature NVIDIA Corporation's (NVDA) Tegra 3 quad-core CPU chipset. NVIDIA's shares rose in conjunction with the announcement, gaining 3.06% to $13.12.

Despite investor uncertainty about Research In Motion's (RIMM) first-quarter earnings announcement tomorrow, the BlackBerry maker was also a market winner, gaining 2.4% to $9.18.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the beleaguered electronics company to report a loss of 1 cent per share on $3.11 billion in revenue.

The stock has traded between $8.83 and $33.54 this year and is down 36.69% year to date.

--Written by Nathalie Pierrepont in New York.

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