Reuters Summit-Tech, media & telecom execs pick favorite stocks

(For other news from the Reuters Global Technology, Media and
Telecoms Summit, click here )

By Tiffany Wu

NEW YORK, May 22 (Reuters) - Executives at the Reuters Global
Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit this week were asked to name
some companies or sectors that they would consider good investment
plays.

With the caveat that they could not cite their own company,
many executives stuck to consumer favorites like Apple Inc
(AAPL.O) or Google Inc (GOOG.O), or delved into alternative energy
providers.

Some executives managed to circle back to their own industry,
to prior employers, or to companies where they sit on the board.

Others dodged the question, saying if they were in the
stock-picking business, they wouldn't need to be a CEO.

Here are some highlights:

"I'm a long-term investor so I would pick Apple. Yes, it's
about 187 bucks or something like that, so it's not a cheap stock
to buy, but I still think in the long term, as long as
nothing happens to Steve Jobs, it's one of the coolest companies
and it has had more surprises up its sleeve than any other company
I have seen in years."

-- Hamid Akhavan, CEO of T-Mobile [TMOG.UL]

"I always put Cisco as first. It is just a phenomenal company
and I'm constantly blown away that a $40 billion company can keep
growing at 15 percent a year."

-- Brian Halla, CEO of National Semiconductor Corp (NSM.N),
who sits on the board of Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O)

"Google right now, from where we could see it, certainly looks
unstoppable. So I wouldn't bet against them for a year."

"I think the biotechs are beaten down ... As everybody ages
and we all need better healthcare, I don't quite exactly
understand why that market would go down."

-- John Chen, CEO of Sybase Inc (SY.N)

"I guess I would pick someone like WD (Western Digital Corp
(WDC.N)). My competitor makes $4 a share and it is trading at
something like $27. That is ridiculous.

"There are like 85 start-ups now in the Valley in solar or
some sort of version of solar power. If the government passes a
solar bill that gives you inducements to buy solar, a couple of
these solar companies are going to do really good."

-- Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate Technology STX.N

"I do look somewhat enviously at what David Calhoun is doing
at Nielsen ... The attraction is you can do things inside that
private equity environment which don't attract the attentions of
Reuters, Thomson or Thomson Reuters, or indeed others."

-- Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group Plc (WPP.L), who joked
that if he had enough money, he would take WPP private.

"The segment that I personally like and I've seen close up is
virtualization. This is just such a prolific market segment. This
goes to VMware (VMW.N) and what we've seen there, but it also
includes Citrix (CTXS.O)."

"I also continue to really like a lot of the growth in storage
markets ... Both NetApp (NTAP.O) and EMC (EMC.N) are inevitably
companies that will continue to grow because of the amount of data
we store personally, as well as in computing."

-- Dave DeWalt, CEO of McAfee Inc (MFE.N). He used to work at
EMC Corp, which owns about 86 percent of VMware Inc.

"They (Samsung) are very much competitive and their future is
bright -- memory digital display and mobile phones."

-- H C Kwon, Senior Vice President of Hynix Semiconductor Inc
(000660.KS), said of close rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd
(005930.KS).

"I have so much wrapped up in AT&T stock, I'll be honest --
what I'd do in the market outside our own stock is pretty much
geared to indices and sectors. What I try to do with the rest of
my investments, I try to stay diversified."

"One of my individual investments is BP (BP.L) but that's
because that's where my dad worked for years. So I inherited
stock. I won't sell."

--Rick Lindner, CFO of AT&T Inc (T.N)

"My pick would be Google. If you look at the penetration of
the Internet it is going to grow and I think more and more people
are going to be using Google."

-- Jean-Francois Decaux, chairman and co-CEO of JCDecaux

Research in Motion's (RIM.TO) (RIMM.O) "BlackBerry ... I have
not looked at the price recently but I wish I had bought it a
couple of years ago when I got very passionate about using it."

-- Erik Wachtmeister, founder and chairman of A Small World

"Qualcomm (QCOM.O) is definitely one that is going to grow a
lot more."

- Yannick Levy, CEO of DiBcom

"Our favorite pick is still Nintendo (7974.OS), we could say
it's too expensive but hey, they've gained so much ... It's quite
amazing, that company revolutionized quite a bit of our industry
and that will go on."

-- Gerhard Florin, Executive VP and General Manager
International Publishing of Electronic Arts Inc (ERTS.O)

"I would be looking for stocks in energy. People who are going
to change the game in energy and really change the game in the
environment, really create products that can make a difference
here."

--Mike Splinter, CEO of Applied Materials Inc (AMAT.O)

"I don't have long these guys and short the other guys ... It
seems to me that we are still going to be in a period through 2008
of where a lot of the financial sector is going to have to
continue to look at its capital needs, continue to raise capital,
and that certainly does have some impact on maybe the velocity of
where the markets are."

-- Rick Simonson, CFO of Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE) (NOK.N)

"I am a horrible stock picker, so I really don't want to get
any of your readers the wrong advice."

-- Dan Schulman, CEO of Virgin Mobile USA Inc (VM.N)

"I'm not the best person to ask about stock picks. I actually
have the opposite effect. Whatever I buy you should sell and
whatever I sell you should buy."

-- Enrique Salem, COO of Symantec Corp (SYMC.O)
(For more executive stock picks, see [ID:nL21911737])
(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)
(For more on the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms
Summits see [ID:nL1919425]
(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan and Kate Holton in
Paris, and Saumya Chakrabarty in Tokyo; editing by Phil
Berlowitz)