RIM Tumbles as Tech Stocks Gain

Shares of Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) fell Wednesday on jitters ahead of the company’s earnings report, but the rest of the tech sector managed to end the day higher.

RIM fell 3.8% ahead of its quarterly results due out after the market close on Thursday. Despite stiff competition from Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and the worst economy in at least 50 years, analysts are expecting 52% sales growth from the BlackBerry maker.

The Nasdaq ended the day 0.7% higher, thanks to better than expected sales and guidance from Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE), which rose 1.8%.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) were other gainers. Microsoft was up on a ComScore report that its Bing search engine continues to gain ground on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QLCM), Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) rose on upgrades.

HP (NYSE: HPQ) and VMware (NYSE: VMW) were other strong stocks in the tech sector.

Disappointing results from FedEx (NYSE: FDX) and worries about the government’s proposed tougher oversight of the financial industry kept the rest of the market at the flat line.

The Nasdaq rose 11 to 1808, the S&P 500 lost 1 to 910, and the Dow slipped 7 to 8497. Volume rose to 5.7 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.57 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 21-16 margin on the NYSE, while advancers led 14-12 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 31% on the NYSE, and 54% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 9-50 on the NYSE, and 23-20 on the Nasdaq.