Tech Stocks: Adobe up, Microsoft and Apple down

Tech stocks often move together, but today that certainly wasn’t the case, as Adobe Systems, Inc. (ADBE) was up 5.6% after a great day that led their stock to $45.78.

The jump comes just a day after Adobe, which makes business software, such as the popular Adobe Acrobat software, announced that they were well on their way to a subscription-based business model. The shift also was precipitated by analysts such as Kash Rangan of Merrill Lynch, who upgraded Adobe from neutral status to a recommendation to buy. Rangan said he had a “higher confidence in Adobe’s ability to convert a large portion of its total available market of about 12 million installed license base of Creative Suite customers eventually into a potentially large several billion dollar recurring revenue stream.”

Others, of course, were not so confident. Michael Olson of Piper Jaffray, kept Adobe in neutral, saying that “the ongoing transition toward subscription will drive increasing revenue per customer, but it remains to be seen if it can materially grow the size of the Adobe creative customer base.”

Then, you’ve got Apple and Microsoft. By the end of the day, Apple was down 2%, closing at $423. Meanwhile, Microsoft was down 1.1%, closing at $34.59. Other stocks in the tech arena that were down include Blackberry (BBRY), down at 4.4% to close at $14.18.