Though there’s a delay in reimbursement, Cray likely won’t have to take a lower rate on future reimbursement from DARPA, he believes.

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Since the beginning of the year, Apple shares have more than doubled from $90.75 on Jan. 2 to almost $186 today.

Google (GOOG) has done about half that performance, while Microsoft (MSFT) has done one-third. (See the chart below; click on it to make it larger.)

But that’s apparently not enough, according to Thomas Weisel analyst Doug Reid, who has raised his price target on Apple (AAPL) stock to $210 from $180 a share.

Citing higher sales and profit estimates, healthy demand and the iPhone headed to China–and the launch of a cheaper $800 MacBook soon–Reid wrote, “We believe there is a high likelihood Apple will fortify its entry into the holiday season and that such a move will be a positive for AAPL shares.”

While this all makes sense, one wonders if the froth can reach that level.

In any case, perhaps what is more interesting is the $166.4 billion market cap for Apple, which is well below Microsoft at $232 billion.

But it is well above Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) at $113.4 billion, Google at $158 billion, Dell (DELL) at $30.6 billion and Palm (PALM) at a paltry $2.4 billion.

With that kind of massive valuation and a pile of it in cash, perhaps the better question is what Apple will do with its soaring stock.

Oddly enough, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth singing the big number, “Defying Gravity,” in the musical, “Wicked,” sound a lot like they are channeling Apple’s corporate mantra these days.

Witness:

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.

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“By the end of Intersolar, we sensed growing, albeit cautious optimism,” Cowen’s Robert Stone writes in a research note this morning. “ASPs are still uncertain, but volumes should definitely be up in Q2/Q3, and deals were starting to close.” He says that despite a strong rebound in the stocks since early March, the group “remains mostly undervalued.”

Likewise, Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Jeff Osborne writes that “it appears demand trends in Europe are accelerating with many companies indicating a 40-100 percent increase in units in Q2 sequentially, led mainly by Germany with some credit easing in Mediterranean countries as well.”

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We’re getting one today.

SolarWinds Inc. (SWI), an Austin-based provider of network management software, on Tuesday priced an IPO of 12,116,279 shares at $12.50 apiece. The company is selling 9 million shares in the offer, with selling holders–including various officers of the company and several venture investors–offering the rest. The selling holders will sell up to an additional 1,817,441 shares to cover over-allotments.

The banks on the deal include J.P. Morgan (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), with Jefferies & Co. (JEF), Thomas Weisel (TWPG) and Ladenburg Thalmann as co-managers.

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Quarles did not alter any estimates or her price target or rating on Google.

The comScore “qSearch” International report gives traffic ranking for Web search sites overseas. It shows Google’s share of search increased by 1.6 percentage points in November, to 62.4 percent; Yahoo’s share of worldwide searches declined a quarter of a percentage point, to 8.3 percent; Microsoft’s share rose five percentage points to 1.9 percent, and Baidu’s (BIDU) was 11.4 percent, down about one percentage point. Globally, meaning, when you add in the U.S., Google was 61.9 percent of searches, up 1.5 percentage points.

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Quarles lowers her 2008 profit estimate by a penny to 43 cents a share, and lowers her 2009 estimate from 42 cents to 38 cents, mainly because of a six percent year-over-year decrease in display ad revenue in the fourth quarter and a two percent drop in 2009. She thinks search ad revenue will rise 10 percent and 7.2 percent in those periods, respectively.

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Thomas Weisel analyst Doug Reid this morning noted that he is “incrementally more cautious” on the company after a survey of 35 “PC experts” over the Black Friday weekend at Best Buy (BBY) stores. Reid writes that Dell remains “a weak competitor” in the retail channel and that “quality problems may be re-emerging.”

Reid says that Dell’s mind share at U.S. retailers “remains weak.” He says sales people preferred Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) over Dell by 5-to-1, asserting that it offers better overall value. “While HP has been sold at Best Buy for much longer than Dell, quantitatively, the results are still somewhat disappointing considering that Dell has been sold at BBY stores for 11 months,” he writes.

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