This Morning: Is Microsoft Ahead in the 3-Screen War? Keeping Tabs on Computex

Here are some things going on this morning in your world of tech:

Shares of Facebook�(FB) are down 76 cents, or 2.7%, at $26.96 this morning, as Bernstein Research’s Carlos Karjner starts the stock with an Underperform rating and a $25 price target.

In other Facebook news, The Wall Street Journal’s Anton Troianovski and Shayndi Raice write that the company is rethinking its prohibition against children younger than 13 jointing the site, according to multiple unnamed sources. The move could provide “a new pool of users” that could be “tapped” for revenue, the authors write.

The Computex computer trade show is in full swing in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, even though doors don’t officially open until tomorrow, with a slew of tablet-related and hybrid tablet/computer-related news already unveiled during the pre-show press conference�that took place this morning (or afternoon, in Taipei time). One good place to keep tabs on it is the Computex 2012 page at C|Net. The folks at The Verge are also doing their darnedest this morning.

Nick Bilton of the New York Times‘s Bits blog pens a very upbeat column on Microsoft‘s (MSFT) prospects in the battle for the “three screens” — smartphones, tablets and televisions. Writes, Bilton, Microsoft has something both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) must envy, namely the 67 million Xboxes it’s sold and the 40 million Xbox Live members. Bilton quotes a venture capitalist saying “Whichever company ends up owning the living room, where most content is consumed, could own the entire sphere.”

In other Microsoft matters, Jay Yarow of Business Insider yesterday wrote that the company will introduce a version of its Office productivity suite for Apple’s iPad by November.

Microsoft shares today are up 5 cents, or 0.2%, at $28.50 in early trading.

Cloud computing vendor Salesforce.com (CRM) this morning announced it would acquire something called Buddy Media, a “social media marketing platform,” with customers including Ford (F) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), for $689 million in cash and stock. Salesforce in its announcement projected full-year profit slightly below consensus, at $1.45 to $1.49 per share, excluding some costs, below the $1.63 average estimate. The projected revenue, $2.99 billion to $3.03 billion, was ahead of the Street’s average $2.995 billion esimtate, per FactSet.

Salesforce shares are down $1.66, or 1.3%, at $129.33.

Shares of enterprise storage and networking equipment maker NetApp (NTAP) are unchanged in early trading at $29.44 following a�Bloomberg article by Tara Lachapelle and Peter Burrows stating the company is “becoming increasingly attractive for potential acquirers” given a multiple of just 6.2 times Ebitda, just above its cheapest valuation ever, 5.1 times.

Multiple U.S. carriers announced availability of�Samsung Electronics‘s (005930KS) recently introduced “Galaxy S III” smartphone.�Sprint-Nextel (S), for example, said it will begin selling the device on June 21st.�You can pre-order the device, however, starting tomorrow, at this page.�The S III costs $199.99 for a 16-gigabyte unit with a two-year service contract from Sprint.