Trustnet Alpha Manager Andrew Holliman, says he remains overweight in the technology sector and says he is seeing a lot of value at the moment.
"In the early part of the last decade the sector was wildly overvalued and we have really found a combination of good value and fundamentals over the last few years," says Holliman, who manages Threadneedle's American fund.
"We see a very good mix of high quality blue chip companies trading on attractive cash flow, strong balance sheets, and good reoccurring revenues and in some cases opportunity to grow faster than global GDP."
Hugh Grieves, manager of the Herald Worldwide fund says the technology sector continues to be one of the most attractive sectors in North America with above average growth being driven both by strength in corporate IT spending and consumers buying innovative new products.
"On the corporate side, companies that had locked down their spending during the recession are now opening up their budgets again as they work through a backlog of projects. Additionally Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system is driving an upgrade cycle of corporate IT infrastructure which is further boosting spending," he says.
Since the dotcom bubble ten years ago, the technology sector has experienced a number of falls and gains as the charts shows:
Performance over 1-yr
Source: Financial Express Analytics
Performance over 3-yrs
Source: Financial Express Analytics
Simon Moss, manager of the Scottish Widows American Growth fund is also positive.
"We think there is a huge demand for bandwidth in the technology industry at the moment and with the launch of the iPhone and iPad there are bottle necks being created in the networks and we are trying to find exposure to those," he says.
Grieves agrees and says Apple, who recently overtook Microsoft as the world’s largest technology company, has been the biggest innovator in the technology industry of late and believes this has helped the industry.
"Its success has had been a boon for the whole technology ecosystem. Whilst suppliers to Apple such as Imagination Technologies and Sandisk have been direct beneficiaries, other companies such have built on the success of Apple with their own products and expanded the market yet still further," he says.
AXA Framlington's Global Technology manager, Jeremy Gleeson also rates Apple and says although the company is on a premium to Microsoft; he does not think it is particularly expensive.
"Microsoft is currently trading at around ten times, if you strip out the cash, while Apple is trading at around 17 times and that is without stripping out the cash," he says.
"Just shy of 10 per cent of Apple's market cap is in cash, so whilst they are at a premium to Microsoft both companies are exhibiting very different growth characteristics which somewhat warrant that premium."
Chiyo Rimington, director investment management at Brewin Dolphin says she purchased Apple for the portfolio as she believe that the company has yet to capitalise from the success of the iPhone, the
Mac and now the iPad.
"This quarter's profits revealed 8.75 million iPhones were sold in the first quarter. We expect this growth to gain momentum as Apple continues to upgrade the phone to include better voice recognition and video chatting," she says.
Intermediaries also support the technology sector, Graham Toone; head of investment research at AFH believes there has been a lot of under investment in the area.
"We think corporations will be trying to catch up and I think there will be a lot of investment going into this area," he says.
Going forward James Abate, manager of the PSigma American Growth fund believes the technology industry will continue to strive.
"We see tremendous opportunities for the technology sector overall as consumer and enterprise areas enjoy sustainable growth with expanding profit margins leading us to have technology as our largest sector weighting," he says.