Nearly half of all U.S. smartphone and tablet owners use these mobile devices every day while watching television. Every day. 46% of smartphone owners and 43% of tablet owners.

What are these people doing? According to Nielsen, most people are using second screens to distract themselves from what they’re watching to either search the Web for something (63% of smartphone owners, 76% of tablet owners) or just to surf the Web (68% of tablet owners, 55% of smartphone owners).

More than half of all mobile device users say they visit social networking sites while watching TV. And the social aspect of watching TV is important too: 21% of tablet users and 18% of smartphone users say they read conversations about the program on a social networking site, and 20% of tablet users shop for products or services being advertised. Some even watched a particular TV program because comments on a social media site.

And the number of viewers using mobile devices to enrich or enhance their TV viewing is growing. Viewers use tablets and smartphones to look up information on actors or teams (49% of tablet users, 34% of smartphone users).

The social aspect of using a second screen appears to be the main function for a smartphone or tablet in the hands of a TV viewer. Social media and mobile devices are changing how people watch and interact with television. This is indeed a brave new world.

First Solar said it would use the proceeds from the sale:

[F]or general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions of under development photovoltaic solar power system projects, investments in photovoltaic solar power system projects that will be jointly developed with strategic partners and capital expenditures or strategic investments to develop certain business units and expand in new geographies.

At the time of the announcement, First Solar’s shares were trading near the 52-week high of $59, so the timing could not have been much better from the company’s point of view. From a shareholder’s perspective, perhaps not so much.

Solar power installations in the first quarter of this year reached an all-time high in the United States. Prices for solar panels have stopped sinking like a stone, and First Solar’s technology always has been competitive on price and is gaining in terms of efficiency. The company’s acquisition of a solar installation company in 2010 has helped bring First Solar’s revenues and profits back from the deal.

Shares traded flat at $45.85 about 45 minutes after today’s open, in a 52-week range of $13.25 to $59.00. Here is a 12-month chart of First Solar’s share price, showing that it continues to trade very near its 50-day moving average and well above the 200-day average.

Siemens has reportedly spoken to buyout firms TPG, Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts & Co. (NYSE: KKR) about buying the entire company. As a publicly traded company, NSN could be worth as much as $9.4 billion, including debt.

The chief financial officer of Siemens has said that making networking equipment is not a business that Siemens sees itself as part of for the long haul, and that the company would like to exit this year.

Whether or not Nokia could put together an offer for the other half of NSN is questionable. But the networking venture has been good to Nokia’s bottom line in the past couple of quarters, and that is not something the company can say about most of its business. Operating profit at NSN rose 200% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2012 and was up 78% sequentially. First-quarter results were lower, but still positive.

Shares of Siemens are down about 1.1% in premarket trading this morning, at $105.45 in a 52-week range of $77.88 to $113.16.

Shares of Nokia are up 3.7%, at $3.66 in a 52-week range of $1.63 to $4.90.

According to its most recent annual filing with the SEC, Nokia had $4.6 billion in cash and $8.4 billion in short-term investments at the end of 2012. Buying Siemens’ share of NSN does not appear to be a good use of that liquidity. Siemens might want to see if it can interest a Chinese buyer, say, Huawei, already a competitor of NSN.

The San Jose Mercury News posted an analysis that shows, among other things, that Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) has chopped its R&D budget in recent years. That might be a cause for its terrible financial condition now. However, some companies that have large budgets, and even accelerated R&D investments, have not done much better than HP.

Among those companies that spent a very large amount on R&D compared to their revenues last year are battered Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR).

At the other of the spectrum are companies that spend a very small portion of sales on R&D. These include Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), each of which has to be considered the leader in its sector.

The ready argument about the why R&D investment and success are not linked is that troubled corporations have such pathetic revenue size compared to their rivals, and such little growth, that any expenditure would look large. On the other hand, very large companies that are growing quickly may spend a large amount in actual dollars on R&D, but they are so successful that even these very large investments appear small compared to their massive sales.

The final case about R&D expenditure size is that successful companies can make modest investments because their spending is “smart” while that of troubled rivals is “stupid.” The ultimate proof of that is Apple’s ratio of R&D to sales is very small. But its investment has created products like the iPhone. At the other end of the spectrum, AMD has not come even close to rivaling the market share of Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) in terms of PC processor sales. Its R&D investments, therefore, have to be misplaced.

The Mercury News quoted one expert whose opinion may be completely wrong because it defies what appears to be a case that R&D as a percentage of revenue may favor companies with low ratios:

“HP is not as competitive as they should be across a lot of their portfolio,” said Baird Equity Research analyst Jayson Noland, “and that absolutely has some correlation to what they spend on R&D.”

In reality, HP may just have placed its R&D bets on products that have taken it in the wrong direction.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) short interest fell 0.2% to 224.42 million shares. About 4.5% of Intel’s float is now short.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) saw short interest rose 4.6% to 96.3 million shares, or 15.9% of the company’s total float.

Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) short interest fell 4% to 16.29 million shares, which represents 1% of the company’s float.

ARM Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: ARMH) saw a 21.8% drop in short interest to 3.18 million shares, which represents about 0.7% of the firm’s float.

Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) showed a rise of 10% in short interest to 76.43 million shares, or about 7.5% of Micron’s float.

SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) saw short interest rise 1.6% to 7.59 million shares, or 3.1% of the company’s float.

Short interest in Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM) fell 10.8% to 8.02 million shares. That is 1.5% of the total float.

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL) posted a 23.8% decrease in short interest to 4.79 million shares, or about 1.2% of Marvell’s float.

Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) short interest rose by a whopping 86.4% to 59.06 million shares, about 10.7% of the company’s float.

Texas Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: TXN) saw short interest decline by 15.5% to 19.75 million shares, or 1.8% of the float.

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) short interest fell 24.5% to 13.82 million shares, which is about 1.2% of the company’s float.

The Market Vectors Semiconductor ETF (NYSEMKT: SMH) showed a drop of 7.9% in short interest to 7.85 million shares.

Nvidia put up a recent high near $15 on May 21, and shares dropped to a two-week low on May 23. The shares closed at $14.17 last night and a further drop is not out of the question.

California was again the number one state for new solar installations, with 408 megawatts installed in the first quarter, more than a third of the total installed in the state during all of 2012. Utility scale projects represented well over half of all first-quarter installations in the state.

The national average price for an installed system fell from $4.45/watt in the first quarter of 2012 to $3.37/watt in 2013. Prices for residential systems fell 15.8% year-over-year, from $5.86/watt to $4.93/watt. Sequentially, prices fell by 1.9%. Prices for non-residential systems fell 15.6% year-over-year and 8.1% sequentially. Utility-scale projects saw an year-over-year price decline of 26% and 6% sequentially.

Module prices fell from $0.94/watt in the first quarter of last year to $0.64/watt this year, while polysilicon prices declined from $31.62/kg to just $17.36/kg. It’s no wonder that silicon and module makers are having a tough time.

GTM Research expects all solar installations to total 4,400 megawatts in 2013, rising to nearly 9,200 megawatts by 2016. The largest opportunity for near-term growth has shifted to the residential market.

The research firm reported 6 megawatts/AC of concentrating solar capacity was installed in the first quarter. Two large projects totalling more than 500 megawatts/AC are scheduled for completion by the end of this year.

GTM Research notes that risks to their projections come from attempts by utility companies to revise, cap, or eliminate net metering; to change rate structures to make solar power more costly; and availability of financing.

Americans streamed nearly 22 billion songs in the first quarter of 2013, and the number is sure to rise as more people subscribe to various services. Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P), iHeartRadio from Clear Channel Communications, Spotify, Rhapsody and Slacker Radio are among the most popular Internet radio apps, and all posted at least double-digit growth in 2012. iHeartRadio more than doubled its user base in that year and Spotify grew by 91% to lead the pack, according to a recent survey by Nielsen.

More than a quarter of connected device (smartphones, tablets) owners are most likely to use their devices to stream music from their smartphones. From Apple’s point of view, if it can get these users — many of whom own and use iPhones — to stream iTunes Radio, then Apple and its music industry partners will be well positioned to sell more songs from the iTunes store.

According to Nielsen’s U.S. Entertainment Consumer Report, 29% of consumers are more likely to purchase new music after hearing it through a streaming service. Physical CDs saw a drop of about 13.5% in sales between 2011 and 2012, while digital album sales jumped 14% and digital singles sales rose 5%. Digital singles, however, accounted for 1.34 billion of the total 1.66 billion units in music industry sales in 2012.

In the new world of streaming music, singles rule. This puts a lot of pressure on the music industry, reliant as it is on album sales. The industry posted its first profit since 1999 last year — a scant 0.3% on sales of $16.5 billion. Streaming music serves as both a way for listeners to hear the songs they like and to discover new songs and artists.

Converting those likes into more sales, or higher licensing fees, are the two main ways the music industry can grow. As music services proliferate — Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) also has a streaming service now — the industry would be well served to go after more sales, keeping licensing fees low. That would seem to be Apple’s approach as it kicks out its iTunes Radio and chases a bigger piece of the $16.5 billion pie.

For the second quarter, LDK estimates revenue will total $100 million to $150 million, while wafer shipments will total 250 to 300 megawatts and cells and modules will total 30 to 40 megawatts. The consensus second-quarter estimates expect a loss per ADS of $0.85 on revenues of $138.3 million.

LDK is one of the weakest of the dwindling number of Chinese solar module makers. The company survives thanks to the goodwill of its creditors, who appear to have the patience of Job with the struggling company.

A planned spin-off of LDK’s polysilicon unit last week was cancelled, which means that LDK is on the hook for loan repayment of around $295 million. The company has only $174 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the first quarter, so the firm will have to get out its begging bowl again.

The company’s CEO said:

We are undertaking a number of initiatives focused on the restructuring of our business. We are working closely with our stakeholders and relevant governmental agencies to negotiate solutions.

LDK’s only hope for survival is intervention by the central or local government, disguised as a renegotiation of the billions in loans that the company has with China’s state-controlled banks. Any investment in LDK now indicates that the investor is betting that the government will not let the company fail. Be advised.

LDK’s shares traded higher after-hours last night, up 2.4% to $1.68 from the official close of $1.64. The stock’s 52-week range is $0.71 to $2.36. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $1.10 before today’s results were announced. That “consensus” is based on one broker’s estimate.

Both Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) are “winning” the mobile market, depending on what track the two are running on. Google’s Android operating system is a clear winner in the platform wars, and devices running Android outnumber devices running Apple’s iOS.

Market research firm Flurry looked at the horse race on a couple of different tracks as well. On the basis of time spent in apps, iOS outruns Android by more than 20%. The introduction of the iPhone 5 stopped a skid in iOS app usage that followed the introduction of Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphone. The new iPad and the iPad mini started another Android slide that was halted slightly by the introduction of the Galaxy S4, but the halt was only temporary.

Flurry offers three possible explanations for the gap in time spent within apps, but our view is that the introduction of the iPad mini really changed the game. The smaller screen size and lower price answered consumer demand for a competitively priced Apple tablet. And tablets, more so than even smartphones, have been widely adopted in the two-screen environment that was once dominated by a TV screen.

Apple completely dominates the profit side of the mobile device market, but Android stands out in emerging markets, where inexpensive devices prevail. Whether Google can convert all those cheap Android-based phones into profits remains a question that the company has avoided answering. We predict that as soon as there’s some good news to report, Google will be first out of the gate.

Earnings growth for the U.S. technology sector will outpace the market over the next few years, in their view, based on secular growth drivers (mobility, cloud computing, online advertising, e-commerce), exposure to fast-growing emerging markets and pent-up enterprise demand.

With all of those factors in play the have a list of top technology stocks to buy now.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the elephant in the room. Loved as a technology icon less than a year ago, the stock has lost its love affair with Wall Street analysts. UBS maintains that three drivers of growth the iPhone, iPads and PCs ultimately will reignite the story. The Thomson/First Call estimate for the stock is $530. Investors are paid a 2.7% dividend.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is another technology story from the past fighting back into contention. The company has restructured operations and reset growth expectations for the future. The consensus price target for the stock is at $26. Investors are paid a 2.8% dividend.

Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) has seen its chip business suffer due to lack of capacity and pricing pressure. UBS thinks the capacity issues are behind them and margins are set to return to normal levels. The consensus price target for the stock is $77. Investors receive a 2.2% dividend. A move to the target represents a gain of more than 20%.

SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) is well positioned with the limited number of NAND flash suppliers for continued success. UBS believes mobility and the migration of enterprise storage to solid-state alternatives will drive demand going forward. The consensus price objective for the stock is $66.

Investors wanting to be involved in the technology sector in a more diverse manner have several good options. One good avenue is the Columbia Seligman Premium Technology Fund (NYSE: STK). This closed-end fund has a total return objective while using a covered-call writing strategy. It trades at a discount to its net asset value. The fund pays a quarterly dividend of 0.4625 per share, which equates to a 12.33% dividend. With the majority of the funds holdings in the top U.S. technology stocks, and a solid income stream, it may be a solid way to play the sector. The fund does not use leverage of any kind to generate higher return.

Another way for investors to play the technology trade is the Technology Select Sector SPDR (NYSEMKT: XLK). This is a more fundamental way to have an index type trade on the technology sector, without the higher income component. With a low 0.18% expense ratio, and every major U.S. technology stock in the portfolio, investors have a wide exposure to the sector. The fund also pays a 1.77% dividend to shareholders quarterly.

Technology by any measure is cheap compared to the rest of the market. Investors should consider the historical gains in the sector when trading at such low price-to-earnings levels. If history is any guide, then gains are there for the taking for the patient portfolio.