Market research firm Gartner Inc estimated 7.3 million Chromebooks would be sold this year, helped mainly by demand from the education industry.

Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N), the world's No. 2 PC maker, reported a quarterly profit above market estimates, helped by cost cuts, sending its shares up more than 3 percent in after-market trading.

Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said Thursday that mutual funds will increasingly realize that being underweight shares of Apple will hurt their performance as the technology giant continues to innovate.

The S&P 500 closed at a record high on Thursday after disappointing economic data bolstered expectations that an interest rate hike is likely to come only later in the year.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose slightly more than expected last week, but the underlying trend continued to suggest the labor market was tightening.

Canadian e-commerce software maker Shopify Inc (SHOP.N) (SH.TO) said its U.S. initial public offering was priced at $17 per share, valuing the company at about $1.27 billion.

Oil prices rebounded on Wednesday, with U.S. crude snapping a five-day decline, after another weekly inventory draw but gains were still limited by a huge supply overhang and concerns about a stronger dollar.

U.S. stocks ended marginally lower on Wednesday after Wall Street saw little in the minutes from last month's Federal Reserve meeting to alter expectations of when the central bank will raise interest rates.

Federal Reserve officials believed it would be premature to hike interest rates in June even though most felt the U.S. economy was set to rebound from a dismal start to the year, according to minutes from their April policy meeting released on Wednesday.

Microsoft's plan to make its new version of Windows a mobile hit by letting it accept tweaked Apple and Android apps has met an obstacle: some of the software developers the company needs to woo just aren't interested.