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HTC's market capitalization reaches $33.8b, overshadows Nokia and RIM
Nokia once said that going with Android was like "peeing in your pants" for temporary warmth. Well, even if that warmth doesn't last forever, it has now helped one of its upstart competitors, HTC, to rise beyond Nokia in terms of market valuation. This is a somewhat beguiling metric to compare companies by -- market cap measures the value of a company's shares available on the market, and not every company has the same proportion of its overall value available in stocks -- but it illustrates well the diametrically opposite directions in which the two mobile phone makers are moving. Bloomberg informs us that HTC's stock has risen by 33 percent this year, while Nokia's has shrunk by 19 percent. Surpassing Nokia now means HTC is the world's third most valuable smartphone maker. Of course, neither Nokia nor RIM is sitting idly by and letting the Taiwanese whippersnapper have things its own way, however both companies' roadmaps for re-conquering the smartphone high-end seem to stretch far off into the 2012 distance. As for HTC, we expect it to launch another Sensation of a device on Tuesday.
Rumor: Final Fantasy XIV draws a $26 million ragequit
reddit_url = "http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/10/13/rumor-final-fantasy-xiv-draws-a-26-million-ragequit/"; reddit_target="gaming"; Tweet You may or may not be one of the people unhappy with Final Fantasy XIV in its current state. Certainly the game has both drawn its fair share of ire and praise, and it's hard to picture a launch with more strongly divided opinions. But even if you hate everything the game turned out to be, you have to admit that you can't make quite the spectacle that one unnamed Japanese player did -- a rage-fueled quit that involved selling off $26 million worth of Square-Enix stock as a parting gesture. Square-Enix experienced a definite dip in stock value on the 7th, dropping from 1800 yen a share to 1735 a share before recovering later in the day. According to Japanese sources, this was preceded by a rather angry dispatch from a shareholder explaining that he was so disgusted by Final Fantasy XIV he no longer wanted any of the stock. While there is some debate as to the chain of events and their veracity, it would certainly make this event the ultimate response to the question of "can I have your stuff?" [Thanks to Stormwaltz for the tip!]
