The Battle Road Tech Index™ eked out a gain of 1.2 percent for the week ended June 12, 2009, closing at 1330. Year-to-date, the index is up 33 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:

Shares of Dell (NASDAQ: DELL $13.39) rose 10.8 percent over the week. The company, which had $9.7 billion in cash at the end of the first quarter, raised additional cash when it sold $1 billion in bonds on Wednesday, giving it plenty of financial flexibility. The street now expects Dell to become more aggressive in targeting mergers and acquisitions, since the company has expressed its desire to expand its data-storage and tech-services businesses. There is also speculation that Dell will acquire Palm (NASDAQ: PALM, $14.58), a manufacturer of mobile phones that recently released its new smart phone, the Pre. While there have been talks of a Dell smart phone offering for some time, it currently has no foothold in the industry, which has grown substantially with the success of Research in Motion’s (NASDAQ: RIMM, $83.02) Blackberry and Apple’s (NYSE: AAPL, $136.97) iPhone.

Speaking of smart phones, Apple fell by 5.3 percent this week, in the aftermath of its developer conference, wherein the company announced a next generation iPhone, as well as price cuts on its existing iPhone product line. Apple’s announcement occurred at the same time that a new challenger, Palm launched its Pre smart phone model.

Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ: AMZN, $84.08) shares fell by 4.0 percent, as the company introduced a new and enlarged version of its Kindle ebook reader that has generally been met with lackluster product reviews. The new Kindle DX reader is priced at $489.00 versus the current price of $359.00 for the existing model. The new Kindle sports a larger form factor, is closer in size to a writing tablet than a paperback, and features a larger screen as well. Separately, Simon & Schuster, the large book publisher, said it would support a new website called Scribd, and would not support the Amazon Kindle format. Instead, Simon & Schuster will support the Sony ebook reader. We suspect that CBS (NYSE: CBS, $8.14), Simon & Schuster’s parent company, is growing increasingly uncomfortable with Amazon.com’s rising influence in the world of digital media.