By Dave Porter

(AXcess News) Reno - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) earnings helped boost tech stocks Monday morning with MSFT trading up over 2.5% after JP Morgan raised its price estimate to $30.  Apple (Nasdaq: APPL), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) all opened stronger.

The Nasdaq Composite Index rose more than 24 points by 10am ET Monday, weighing heavily on the volume of tech stocks included in the index.

Microsoft reported first quarter earnings of 40 cents per share on Friday, though down 18 percent over year-ago levels, analysts as a whole were expecting to see first quarter earnings of 32 cents per share.

Cost-cutting measures helped boost the software giant's results while Microsoft said consumer interest in its products were beginning to show improvement.  The Redmond, Washington-based Company is expecting Windows 7 to help it gain higher sales levels in the coming months and analysts believe Windows 7 will most likely perform for Microsoft's bottom line.

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: APPL) saw its exclusive deal with AT&T (NYSE: T) over its iPhone product payoff with AT&T reporting 2 million new wireless customers over competitor Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), which reported 1.2 million new customer accounts in the third quarter earlier this morning.

Cisco's shares were up 0.7% after the router maker announced a new generation of its popular Integrated Services Router.

Hewlett-Packard shares rose 0.62% after the computer maker's HP Exstream enterprise document automation software was ranked a "market leader" by tech research company IDC.

In Internet stocks, Google Corp. (Nasdaq: GOOG) traded up nearly 1% as tech investors gave support to Google's Android after this morning's weigh in by wireless carriers.  Google also reported strong earnings ahead of search competitors Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), though both search competitors showed improving sales for the search segment that gave way to a positive outlook towards online advertising growth in the next period.