Okay Geek Farm
HTC surpasses Nokia in sheer Market Cap
Daniel Carey
Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC has managed to surpass yet another mobile competitor; the proof is in the pudding, it’s good to be aboard Google’s smartphone operating system. Having recently passed BlackBerry outfitter, Research in Motion, HTC has continued to tread forward finally besting Nokia in sheer market cap. Today, HTC’s market cap is valued at $33.8 billion. In contrast, Nokia’s market cap is valued at $32.4 billion and RIM’s market cap is valued at $28.5 billion.
It is quite frankly the greatest milestone achieved by the company. Just five years ago, before HTC phones, and subsequently smartphones in general entered mainstream society, the company’s market cap was approximately thirty times less of its current value. And guess what? According to a recent Goldman Sachs report, the company is expected to continue growing exponentially. With HTC poised to ship 200 million smartphones and 30 million tablets globally each year over the next five years, we could very well be looking at one of strongest smartphone superpowers on the face of the planet.
Originally, HTC earned its reputation thanks to an abundance of user-friendly Windows Mobile handsets. However, fast forward several years and now they’re widely known for amazingly powerful Android smartphones.
Despite such success, what I’m finding most interesting is the company’s role in Windows Phone 7. As mentioned, HTC was a premier handset manufacturer in the days of Windows Mobile thanks to its Sense user interface. Now, however, Microsoft has ditched one of its most faithful OEM’s in favour of Nokia… a company that holds less market cap. Sure, market cap doesn’t define what a company is able to do with a platform, and I’m not going to deny that. Nevertheless, HTC, a company that wholeheartedly attempted to release several decent Windows Phone 7 devices, failed to gain substantiated traction; instead returning to Google’s ever faithful Android OS.
Feel free to call me pessimistic, but HTC is widely known for having a greater foot hold in the smartphone game than Nokia. Yet somehow, HTC failed to boost Windows Phone 7’s marketshare. That leads me to pose the question: Why should Nokia have any success with the platform when past data would suggest otherwise?
