The Battle Road Tech Index™ fell 1.7 percent for the week ended January 29, 2010, closing at 1549. For the week, 21 of the 25 Index components fell in value. Year-to-date, the index is down 7.8 percent, having started at a value of 1680.

The following companies were notable movers for the week:

Shares of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX, $62.25), the online movie rental leader, rose by 22 percent this week, the single largest one-week upside move in Battle Road’s Tech Index in the last year. Shares were buoyed by better-than-expected earnings results, as well as the expectation for further gross margin gains, due to a rising percentage of video streaming. Having already vanquished its brick and mortar rivals, Netflix appears poised to save a portion of its $600 million in annual DVD postage delivery costs, and invest in new titles emerging from Hollywood studios. The company also continues its aggressive share buy back program.

Shares of Nokia (NYSE: NOK, $13.69) rose 7.6 percent this week after better-than-expected sales and earnings results. The company showed a return to volume growth and better margins at its devices and services unit. The company’s Q4 earnings jumped 65 percent, easily beating estimates. Net income rose to 948 million Euros from 576 million Euros year-over-year. Devices and services margins increased to 15.4 percent from 12.1 percent y-o-y. This was led by a significant refresh of its devices. The results shows that despite a few soft quarters recently, Nokia still stands to benefit from a rebound in cell phone demand and its market share may finally be stabilizing.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN, $125.41) rose 3.3 percent after it handily outpaced Sreet expectations for its fourth fiscal quarter, though it was assisted by $200 million in revenue from recently acquired Zappos as well as a much lower than expected 18 percent tax rate (its tax rate had been 30 percent for the first three quarters of 2009). At a 30 percent tax rate, the company’s EPS would have risen by 49 percent. Following Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL, $192.06) lead, Amazon will now fully recognize revenue for the hardware portion of its Kindle electronic book reader, with the change expected to improve first quarter 2010 results. Amazon faces a potentially awkward competitor in the form of Apple as the Kindle faces off against Apple’s recently announced iPad. For now, the two will engage in a form of gentlemanly “coopetition” as Apple will support the Kindle reader on its iPad and Amazon.com will sell iPads on its websites. Amazon also announced plans for an up to $2 billion share buy back over the next few years.

Shares of Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE, $32.30) fell by 6.1 percent, in the wake of its pricing of $1.5 billion in senior unsecured notes, and the disappointing news that Apple will not support its Flash technology in the first version of the iPad. Adobe intends to use $1 billion of its freshly issued debt to pay down $1 billion on its credit facility, and the rest, we speculate, might be used for share repurchases and acquisitions. With the jury still out on the wisdom of utilizing 65 percent of its cash balance to acquire Omniture, which may or may not prove to be dilutive, investors may be jittery about what may be coming down the road.