This Morning: BlackBerry Day Arrives in U.S., MU Surges, Defending TIBX

Here are some things going on this morning in your world of tech:

It’s BlackBerry (BBRY) day, in a sense, as the Z10 phone goes on sale at retail in the U.S. for the first time at AT&T (T). (Verizon Communications (VZ) general availability starts March 28th). The shares are up 17 cents, or 1%, at $16.33 this morning.

The Financial Times’s Martin Dickson and Paul Taylor last night offered a curtain-raiser in which they write that BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins expressed confidence in the Z10 despite the U.S. being “the most competitive” market in the world.

BGC Partners’s Colin Gillis was on CNBC this morning talking with Melissa Lee, showing off his Z10. He has a Sell rating, however, and a $7 price target. Gillis argues that for BB10 handsets to make a real difference for the company, it has to sell at least five million units a quarter, a level he doesn’t think BB10 can make given “the depth of services the other platforms offer, especially Google‘s (GOOG) Android.”

Meantime, analysts continue to search for rays of hope for Apple (AAPL). RBC Capital’s Amit Daryanani reiterates an Outperform rating and a $600 price target, writing that his “supply chain checks” indicate the company will have new phones “in the June/July time-frame this year,” the much-rumored “iPhone 5S” and the much-rumored lower-cost iPhone.

Daryanani thinks Apple can “capitalize on the low-end smartphone market,” adding $5 per share in profit in calendar year 2014. Apple stock is up $3.54, or 0.8%, at $456.27.

Shares of Micron Technology (MU) are up $1.03, or 11%, at $10.10, as price targets and estimates rise all around following the company’s fiscal Q2 revenue beat last night. Bernstein Research’s Mark Newman reiterates an Outperform rating this morning, and an $11 price target, noting that gross profit was better than he expected for both DRAM and NAND. Newman is encouraged by the company’s remarks that it’s “being very disciplined” in its spending on capacity,” and confirmed his notion that most producers are now moving to “3D” NAND from the current planar type. He also sees further upside in the company’s remarks about its planned integration of Elpida.

Shares of Tibco (TIBX) are down $3.57, or 15.4%, at $19.60 after the company last night reported fiscal Q1 revenue that missed consensus and a Q2 view that was lower as well, which CEO Vivek Ranadive attributed to an ongoing renovation of the sales team. The stock got at least three downgrades this morning, from Atlantic Equities, FBN Securities, and Susequehanna.

Still, the stock has its defenders. Jefferies & Co.’s Aaron Schwartz reiterates a Buy rating, while cutting his price target to $25 from $27. Writes Schwartz, “Sales program changes continue, which make it difficult to call a turn in the business. But we believe the company took a much more conservative approach with guidance which will bring a more aggressive reset to estimates and greater margin for error.”

Shares of Dell (DELL) are down 2 cents at $14.12 following a report late yesterday by The New York Times’s DealBook’s Michael De La Merced, who cites multiple unnamed sources saying that Blackstone Group (BX) is “weighing whether to make an offer for all or part of Dell” ahead of the end of the “go shop” period for the company’s LBO, today.

Shares of Rackspace Hosting (RAX) are down 59 cents, or 1%, at $51.01, after Pacific Crest’s Michael Bowen cut his rating on the shares to Sector Perform from Outperform, with a “fair value estimate” of $45. Bowen thinks the company will have to cut prices to lure enterprise customers to its services, writing, “Our new estimates reflect the impact of yet-to-be-announced tiered pricing plans for the remaining OpenStack services. We believe enterprise customers will demand price concessions for larger or longer commitments and compress margins.”

Shares of Palo Alto Networks (PANW) are up a penny at $55.65 as analysts respond, largely positively, to the company’s first ever analyst day, yesterday. JMP Securities’s Erik Suppiger reiterates a Market Outperform rating and a $77 price target, writing that “We believe the company will continue to rapidly gain share in the network security market and we feel that increasing concerns over advanced malware represents a major growth driver.”