HTC bigger than Nokia, RIM; tablets not included

All Things D is pointing out an amazing accomplishment for the top Android phone maker, HTC. The Taiwanese company has passed Nokia in market cap for the first time; it only recently left RIM of BlackBerry fame behind. This is a stunning achievement for a company that was only a fraction of its current size just 5 years ago. It is equally stunning as HTC is only just now getting ready to enter the tablet game with its HTC Flyer set to hit the market his summer.

HTC garnered a good reputation in the smartphone world years ago with its innovative Windows Mobile handsets. It put a distinctive homescreen "face" on those phones that would eventually become the Sense UI of today. The company saw the writing on the wall early about the wane of Windows Mobile and was one of the first OEMs to jump on the Android train. It would be equally correct to say that HTC had as much to do with the rise of Android as to say that Android fueled HTC's growth.

The HTC market cap is currently almost $34 billion, with Nokia sitting at just under $33 billion. RIM is quite a distance behind these two with a cap of only $28.5 billion.