Dow Jones Newswires Monday afternoon is reporting that the U.S. International Trade Commission is investigating several firms that make or use NAND flash memory chips, including Samsung (SSNLF.PK), the world’s largest maker of NAND flash memory chips; Research in Motion (RIMM); and Apple (AAPL), following a complaint filed with the ITC in July by West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based BTG International.

The BTG complaint, filed on July 27, alleges that Samsung’s chips, and chips used by Apple and RiM and others, infringe on patents BTG holds on “MLC” type NAND flash memory chips. The suit requests the ITC ban Samsung’s chips and any products using them from being brought into the U.S., and for a cease and desist order to be placed on any of the companies’ business relating to those devices. The complaint specifically refers to MP3 players, digital cameras and other classes of device that infringe by their use of NAND flash memory chips.

Target’s (TGT) decision Friday to build out its e-commerce infrastructure won’t likely hurt Amazon.com (AMZN), writes J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan in a note to clients. In fact, it could help.

Target announced Friday it would construct its own order-fulfillment services for its online sales, which totaled $1.8 billion last year, according to Khan’s estimate, signalling the end of its use of Amazon’s back-office fulfillment services, for which Amazon receives a fee.

Bulls are willing to believe Nvidia can keep improving its cost of goods while gaining inroads in mobile devices with new chips; bears assert the company is still doomed longer term by AMD’s (AMD) and Intel’s (INTC) offerings.

Shares of John Malone’s Liberty Media Interactive (LINTA), owner of “QVC,” are up sharply Friday morning after the company beat Q2 expectations for revenue and operating profit.

Revenue fell, year over year, to $1.9 billion the company reported, yielding adjusted Ebitda of $412 million. Still, that was ahead of the $1.834 billion and $345 million average estimate of analysts.

The cut-rate prepaid cellular market, though representing fully a third of the growth in wireless in the U.S., is not always a comfortable place to be, as evinced by the results today from Metro PCS (PCS), the discount pre-paid cellular operator whose stock was cut by a third after disappointing Q2 earnings.

In a note to clients, Thomas Weisel analyst James Breen cut his rating on the stock to “Market Weight” from “Overweight” and cut his price target to $10 from $21. Ouch.

That’s not enough for some investors, as expectations had been rising going into the quarter. This morning, the stock is down 7 cents, or .3%, at $22.10.

Comcast (CMCSA) shares are on the rise Thursday morning after the U.S.’s largest cable operator beat expectations for EPS on in-line revenue for its Q2. The company managed to beat analysts’ free cash flow projections as capital expenditures continued to decline despite the rollout of several interesting initiatives including wireless services and online video streaming.

Revenue for Q2 rose 4.5% to $8.94 billion, in line with analysts’ estimates, yielding profit per share of 33 cents, ahead of a 26-cent estimate. The company’s video revenue rose 2% based mostly on an increase in revenue per customer even as the company lost 214,000 basic video subscribers. Management remarked on the conference call this morning that given the rough economy, it was tough to sell new connections in April and May, though there was some pickup in June. Free cash flow of $1.2 billion was 16% above expectations, writes Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett in a note Thursday morning.

Video game maker Activision-Blizzard (ATVI) Wednesday evening announced Q2 sales in line with estimates and profit a penny ahead of estimates. The shares rose in after-hours trading.

Activision’s sales, on a non-GAAP basis, in Q2 were $801 million, in line with estimates, with profit per share of 8 cents, compared to the average 7-cent estimate.

More bad news for the DVD industry: Retailers are increasingly subsidizing the cost of renting a DVD, making it less likely consumers will actually purchase titles outright, according to a blog post Wednesday morning from Pali Research analyst Rich Greenfield.

Greenfield notes that Coinstar (CSTR), a vendor of various kinds of point-of-sale kiosks for money transfer, prepaid wireless cards, and even those kiddie crane toys where you try to pick up the prize, reported results much better than expected last night. The company owns something called Redbox, whose 17,000 red-colored DVD rental kiosks show at Macdonald’s (MCD) and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). Redbox is on track to have 22,000 stores by the end of this year, Coinstar says, and the company’s business is “growing like a weed,” observes Greenfield.

Online travel booking site Orbitz (OWW) is soaring Wednesday morning, up 79 cents, or 21%, at $4.52 after the company reported Q2 sales that were in line with estimates and a profit per share where a loss had been expected.

Net revenue fell 19%, year over year, the company reported, to $188 million, in line with analysts’ estimates. Profit per share of 12 cents is in striking contrast to the 6-cent loss per share expected. Although gross bookings were down 12%, year over year, they were up 22% from Q1, the company noted. The company saw better returns from its online marketing effort, it reported. That, and cost cuts initiated last year, resulted in adjusted Ebitda of $45 million, up 23%.

JMP Securities analyst Alex Gauna writes in a note Tuesday morning that the semiconductor industry is undergoing a “classic cyclical recovery” given data from the Semiconductor Industry Association released yesterday that showed global chip sales rose 3.7% from May to June. Gauan reiterated a “Market Outperform” rating on Intel (INTC) and a $24 price target based on 20 times his 2010 EPS estimate of $1.20, which is ahead of the average $1.10 estimate.

Gauna notes that chip sales are still clawing their way back as a percentage of the value of total electronic equipment sales. For example, of the total “Channel Sales” into the business and consume electronics products in June, $129.85 billion, semiconductor sales in the same month equaled only 23% of that sales total. Entering 2008, the percentage was 27% of total channel sales. Which means that chip inventories are still have a ways to go to reach a comfortable level relative to end demand, in Gauna’s view.

Expectations have been building for Cisco Systems’s (CSCO) fiscal Q4 report, which comes Wednesdasy, after the bell. Deutsche Bank last week forecast a “beat and raise” report, while Pacific Crest discussed prospects Cisco’s enterprise customer base is going to rebound for the company.

Analysts are forecasting a roughly 4% quarter over quarter rise in revenue to $8.52 billion and 29 cents in profit. (Last year, the company’s Q4 revenue was up 6% versus Q3). Those estimates have been rising in a bunch of bullish reports just in the last week or so. The company’s own forecast calls for sales of $8.3 billion to $8.6 billion and profit per share and a gross profit of 63% to 64% of sales.

Apple (AAPL) “should be able to grow faster than the overall handset market without materially lowering prices,” concludes Sanford Bernstein analsyt Toni Sacconaghi, in a note Tuesday in which he raised his price target on Apple from $165 to $185. Sacconaghi has an “Outperform” rating on Apple shares.

Apple holds just 8% of the global handset market’s sales but made 32% of the profit in the industry in the first half of this year, writes Sacconaghi. Apple had an operating profit margin of 40% in handsets in the first half, he writes, versus 11.3% for Nokia (NOK), 20.7% for Research in Motion (RIMM), negative 18.5% for Sony (SNE) and Ericsson’s (ERIC) Joint venture, Sony-Ericsson, just 10.5% for Samsung (SSNLF.PK), negative 21% for Motorola (MOT), and a mere 7.1% when you average out all those players.

SunPower beat estimates for its Q2 when it reported on July 23, and raised the bottom of its forecast for 2009 revenue from $1.3 billion to $1.35 billion this year.

Nokia, RIM, and Apple hold 41%, 20%, and 11% of global smartphone production, a combined 72%, as of the March quarter. Taiwan’s HTC (which has made “Android” phones for Google (GOOG)) and Samsung (SSNLF.PK) are a close fourth and fifth, respectively, with 5% and 3%.

In a note to clients Friday morning entitled, “Out Come the Wolves,” Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg reiterates a “Buy” rating on shares of Palm (PALM), raises his price target to $17 from $16, and writes that hand-wringing about the company’s “Pre” smartphone are wrong.

“We think market fears about return rates, weekly order trends and applications development,” for the Pre “are off the mark,” writes Goldberg. “Our checks continue to point to solid demand and carrier interest.”

To recap, Sony said sales in the June-ended quarter fell 19%, year over year, to $16.7 billion, below the average $19.2 billion estimate, while the net loss of 39 cents per share was better than the 69 cents forecasted, thanks to continued cost-cutting measures.

Sales of video game hardware and software were something of a surprise, with the company selling 1.1 million PlayStation 3 units and 1.3 million PSP handheld gaming machines, down from 1.6 million and 3.7 million a year earlier, the company said. Sales of televisions and other consumer electronics were boosted by tight inventory, which helped lift Sony’s average selling prices, but the company said it did not expect this to continue.

Shares of solar panel technology maker First Solar (FSLR) are reversing course Thursday evening, falling to $170 after briefly going as high as $189 following a clean Q2 beat. What’s spooked people are the company’s remarks on a conference call this evening about growing uncertainty in its German market.

The company has seen increasing price-cuts among competitors selling into Germany’s solar power market. Although First Solar makes panels from a thin-film semiconductor technology, it started to see trouble in the German market from manufacturers hit with a glut of polysilicon-based product and slowing of new panel projects, said CEO Mike Ahern.

And here come the downgrades. Four of ‘em Thursday for Akamai Technologies (AKAM), which last night missed Q2 estimates and offered a disappointing forecast.

Katherine Egbert, Jefferies & Co.: Downgrades the stock from “Buy” to “Hold,” and cuts her price target from $25 to $20. Egbert writes Akamai has lost some of its luster of “infallibility” by increasingly chasing price discounts to hold onto business. That’s despite growth in high-def video serving, she observes. “It’s unclear where the price bottom is, and the last time this type of pricing reset occurred, the stock did not recover.” Akamai’s competitors among telecom carriers have a cost advantage in infrastructure over Akamai, she muses, even if they don’t have the company’s brand name and experience in CDN.

Pali Capital analyst Walter Piecyk, who has accused Sprint (S) of fumbling a good opportunity, says the situation with its sales of Palm’s (PALM) Pre smartphone may be poised from some good news for a change.

On Pali’s research blog, Piecyk writes Thursday that sales of the Pre may have “stabilized” at about 25,000 per week through Sprint after falling from 30,000/week and 50,000/week in period just after the phone’s release in June. Sales have stopped falling, in other words. Piecyk says he’s seen no greater visibility in Sprint’s ads for the Pre — he last week lambasted Sprint for not doing enough marketing — and so the apparently stable run-rate in Pre sales makes him think, “Sprint has the opportunity to increase sales from this level from increased advertising or a price cut.”