Microsoft loses market cap top spot

US industrial giant General Electric has knocked Microsoft off the top spot in this year's FT Global 500 rankings.

And telcos have run back up the ladder in what is effectively a financial beauty parade. That's because the companies are ranked by market capitalisation, the hypothetical what-you-can-get for selling all the shares. Profits, dividends, sales and other cash-in the-hand measurements have no part of it.

Still, Gates and Ballmer can take a certain amount of pride, for software as a whole slipped to eighth place in the sector rankings behind - gasp, horrorn - hardware. And for a while, GE and Microsoft have just been trading places at the top.

It's the telcos that have won back the hearts of investors. Vodafone is in there in its almost usual place, moving from 13 to 12 since last year. But Deutsche Telekom, Spain's Telefonica, France Telecom, Bell South and Telecom Italia have all made significant hops up the rankings.

Back in the software world, Oracle has slipped, from 45 to 60 and SAP could be moving into an overtaking position, gunning from 127 to 85. After that, you need to dip down to position 350 to find a proper software house. CA stands at 350, up a respectable jump from 467.

A lot of the old hardware favourites stand roughly where they did last year: Intel's up around the top at number 8; IBM is just behind Vodafone at 14; Dell's at 36; HP at the nice, round number of 50; TI stands in at 80 and Motorola moved up respectably from171 to 115.

Once threatening world domination - for a short time it used to be Europe's largest company - Nokia seems to have settled at 30, while Ericsson has put on a burst from 313 to 105.

The most notable absences from the 500 are Orange, which was 71 but is now part of France Telecom, which it helped shift up from 439 to 345. The former darling of the services world, EDS, has slipped off the radar.

Interesting newcomers include: Mobile Telesystems of Russia, which has crept into the rankings at 488; mmO2, which hopped into 327 after its release by BT (at 175, down from 140, if you ask) and Yahoo! Japan.

Yahoo! Japan is a special case that may illustrate the rankings very well. Punters on the Nikkei in Tokyo just can't get enough of it and it jumped into the rankings at 126 with a market cap of $37.3bn, somewhat more than Yahoo! 'the rest-of-the-world', which would only fetch $31.2bn at 160.

All figures are as of 25 March.