One of the biggest deals of the past week was in the market for carrier equipment, as LM Ericsson won the bidding war over the wireless assets of Nortel Networks, agreeing to pay $1.13 billion for the financially beleaguered Canadian company's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) business and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) Access technology. Ericsson's shares slipped $0.27 to $9.38 Monday after the deal was announced, perhaps because the price tag was considered high, compared to Nokia-Siemens' $650 million bid.

Among the many second-quarter earnings reports this week, SAP and Motorola on Thursday provided an extra boost for optimism. SAP reported a 4 percent year-on-year increase in net income, to €423 million (US$602 million), even as revenue dropped 10 percent.

"I am cautiously optimistic that the worst might be behind us," said CEO Léo Apotheker, speaking to analysts on a conference call.

Motorola posted a profit of $26 million, compared with a profit of $4 million last year. Even though the profit was mainly due to special accounting items, Motorola shares rose $0.62 to $7.19 in after-hours trading Thursday and stayed at that level Friday even though shares of many other major companies slipped in a turbulent trading day. That was because the company did better than expected: It shipped 14.8 million phones, higher than the average forecast of 14.1 million from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

So far, the markets have been gaining at least in part because tech companies have done better than expected during the recession.