Tech Winners & Losers: Sprint

Updated from 2:25 p.m. EDT with new stock prices

Tech stocks were lower Monday, as investors digested last week's disappointing earnings reports from smartphone makers and pored over the monthly chip sales report from the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Sprint Nextel(S Quote - Cramer on S - Stock Picks) gained 58 cents, or 6.7%, to $9.49 following a report in the Wall Street Journal suggesting the company's turnaround efforts may be paying off. Sprint's customer retention numbers are likely to have improved in the second quarter and the company's smartphones are finding greater favor among customers, said the report.

VMware(VMW Quote - Cramer on VMW - Stock Picks) shares recovered after plunging nearly 10% in the last two days following the early release of Microsoft's(MSFT Quote - Cramer on MSFT - Stock Picks) virtualization product. Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization, which has been available in beta, was released to market Thursday for its Windows Server 2008 and is a free product that could pose stiff competition for VMware. Shares of VMware were up $2.78, or 5.5%, to $53.83.

Handset maker Palm(PALM Quote - Cramer on PALM - Stock Picks) continued to lose ground following its weak fourth-quarter earnings report Thursday. Shares of Palm were down 61 cents, or 10.2%, to $5.39. Palm posted a wider-than-expected loss in the fourth quarter as revenue declined about 26%.

Satellite radio company Sirius(SIRI Quote - Cramer on SIRI - Stock Picks) was down 19 cents, or 9.1%, to $1.91 after it announced financial guidance for the combined entity of Sirius and XM Satellite Radio(XMSR Quote - Cramer on XMSR - Stock Picks). In Feb 2007, Sirius said it would buy XM for $4.6 billion and since then has been waiting for regulatory approval to close the deal. Sirius said it expects 2009 total net synergies of $400 million.

Shares of Level 3 Communications(LVLT Quote - Cramer on LVLT - Stock Picks) shed 17 cents, or 5.5%, to $2.95 after an analyst at Citi Investment Research cut his rating on the stock to sell from hold.

Yahoo!(YHOO Quote - Cramer on YHOO - Stock Picks) was down 65 cents, or 3.1%, to $20.68 even as it tried to explain to major shareholders why it rejected an acquisition bid by Microsoft. Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting is scheduled for Aug. 1 and activist investor Carl Icahn has been pushing to replace the company's nine directors and CEO Jerry Yang.