The Battle Road Tech Index™ climbed 3.4 percent for the week ended June 5, 2009, closing at 1314. Year-to-date, the index is up 31 percent, having started at a value of 1000. For the week, 18 of the 25 Index components were in positive territory.

The following companies were notable movers for the week:

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN $87.56) rose 12 percent this week, possibly in response to the sale of privately-held E Ink of Cambridge, MA to Prime View International, a Taiwan-based company that makes electronic book readers, including the Amazon Kindle. The ownership of this key technology kernel by Prime View, which makes both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle, suggests that the Kindle and other book readers will continue to gain market acceptance. Amazon.com stands to gain from the proliferation of such units, as it will make it easier to sell higher margin electronic books, which will in turn free up its physical warehouses to sell higher margin items.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ $37.35) gained seven percent this week, following reports that the company is focusing more on its software and server businesses. The server business has been beset by declining revenues for the past few quarters. The software division of HP generated the most organic sales growth in the company for its most recent quarter. Focusing on these facets of the company indicates that HP will become more engaged with one of its largest rivals, IBM (NYSE: IBM $107.24).

It has been a busy week for Hopkinton, MA -based EMC (NYSE: EMC $12.88). The company received a favorable court ruling in its effort to assure that departing executive David Donatelli adheres to the rules of his non-compete agreement. Mr. Donatelli accepted a position at HP as EVP Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking on May 5. It appears that Mr. Donatelli will be allowed to continue working at HP, as long as his first year responsibilities do not entail running the company’s storage division. EMC’s share price rose nine percent during the week.

Separately, EMC made a hostile tender offer for Silicon Valley based Data Domain (NASDAQ: DDUP $32.59), which had accepted a friendly take-over bid from EMC rival NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP $18.82). Though bidding continues, EMC’s all-cash $30.00 per share/ $1.9 billion bid is superior to NetApp’s cash and stock bid. EMC would draw from its existing cash horde, which exceeds $5.2 billion, net of debt, as of the end of the March 31 quarter. The acquisition, which values Data Domain at more than seven times 2008 revenues would place further strain on NTAP’s already leveraged capital structure. As of last quarter, NTAP had $1 billion, net of debt, on its balance sheet.

Shares of Western Digital (NYSE:WDC $23.68) fell six percent this week on fears that the hard drive industry may again be over-producing. There has been evidence of a slowdown in PC orders heading into the back-to-school season, with only single-digit growth expected for the June quarter. However, data from Techno Systems Research forecast hard drive production increasing more than 20 percent sequentially for the quarter. This could lead to replenishment of inventories in addition to overproduction, with which the industry has been grappling since the economic downturn depressed hard drive demand.