HEXUS.sharewatch: Apple continues to soar

Right now it seems that Apple can do no wrong; every time it launches a new device, no matter how many details leak in advance, the expectant public just can't seem to get enough of them. The iPhone 4 has faced such demand that Apple has had to suspend pre-orders and in the US, AT&T's servers had a spasm under the weight of traffic.

This success continues to be reflected in Apple's share price, which went up another eight percent last week and has now taken Apple's market cap (careful, you'll make TheAnimus angry! - Ed) to a quarter of a trillion dollars.

Apple is now comfortably the biggest company on our list by market cap, more than twice the size of giants like HP, Intel and Oracle. It's also valued some $90 billion higher than arch-rival Google.

At the other end of the market valuation scale, AMD had a pretty good week too. There were now AMD-specific bits of news to explain this, but reports that PC sales are pretty healthy seem to have benefitted AMD, which is seeing a lot of OEM interest in its notebook platform these days.

In stark, but far from coincidental, contrast to Apple, Nokia was the only one of our stocks to decline last week. This was due to an announcement from Nokia lowering its forecast for the Devices and Services division due, in part, to greater than expected competitive pressure at the high end of the market. Hello iPhone.