Quietly taking over
The tech business press is abuzz with the news that smartphone specialist HTC has overtaken Nokia in terms of market cap - the total value of its publicly available shares.
Yes, market cap is just one measure of a company's value and yes, there are potential currency anomalies, but this is a symbolic moment nonetheless.
HTC has been a smartphone pioneer for years, long associated with maddening stylus-dependent Windows Mobile handsets. But the strategic decision to embrace Android is what has seen its stock triple in value over the past year.
In contrast Nokia is the incumbent feature phone giant that has been famously slow to adapt to new mobile devices realities, specifically the need to adopt a viable platform. Nokia's shares have almost halved in value over the past year, as investors reacted negatively to its partnership with Microsoft over WP7, and the effective admission of defeat on the mobile platform front.
HTC is now ahead of both Nokia and RIM and is the most valuable pure-play handset-maker - i.e. not including Apple, Samsung and LG. Motorola Mobility is way back with a market cap of $7.21 billion. Nokia has over 130,000 employees, while HTC has at most a tenth of that.
