HEXUS.sharewatch: Apple market cap equals Wintel

In a largely negative week for tech stocks the only two companies to stay in the black (or green in our case) were the two owners of the dominant mobile platforms - Apple and Google. While that's interesting, there was a much more poignant indicator of the broader tech market trends.

Apple's market cap at the end of last week was $316.40 billion. Microsoft's was $201.59 billion and Intel's was $115.21 billion. So that means the two companies that have defined computing - Wintel - for the past 30 years, are now collectively worth no more than Apple alone.

Of course market cap has plenty of flaws as a measure of a company's size and health, not least that it doesn't represent all the company's shares, but as a general barometer it's useful.

And to put this moment into broader historical context, here's another one for you: both Microsoft and Intel shares are worth around 70 percent of what they were ten years ago. In that same period Apple's shares have increased in value by a factor of 32. Damn.

The big loser of last week was Nokia, of course, after it gave a sales warning. The Finnish handset giant is another casualty of Apple turning the mobile device market in its head four years ago, and it's worth noting that as recently as February 2008 Nokia's share price was $37.62, giving it a market cap of $143 billion. Damn again.