this is far from the truth..market value is indepedend of any dividend paid out to s/hers.. dividend is paid from net profits a company makes (subject to solvency tests). If they cant satisfy the solvency test then they cant pay dividends..so in a sense when they are paying dividends that means that they are in a excellent financial position, which should reflect in a better market value, and not the opposite.

Sony may be larger than M$ because it sells like any type of electronic you can think of, and it distributes movies and music and other stuff. However M$ has sold A LOT of PCs and makes money from xbox. I wouldn't know which is larger. Let me look around my house to see if I have more Microsoft stuff or Sony stuff.

wow I have more sony devices than I thought. It depends on what you mean by "larger"

would be and are, are two different things

There are plenty of successful companies that pay out dividends. If there was such a strong correlation, the market would adjust to it.

The market does adjust for it. Everytime A company pays out a dividend the stock price drops that amount on the execution date for that given dividend. It can go up or down from there depending on all kinds of things, but the market does adjust for it. So if a company paid out a $.50 dividend on April 9th then at the open of the market on April 9th the stock of that company will be $.50 lower than where it was before the open of the market. Thus affecting the Market Cap value of that company. Whether the stock goes up or down after that adjustment depends on other factors, but the market does adjust for dividend pay outs. 

that's cash,

in assets and employees Sony>microsoft > nintendo

That's not adjustment based on how people think the company will perform, nor does it have much impact on how a company operates.

I just don't see how any of this is relevant to the discussion at hand. If there is any impact from dividends, it is miniscule compared to other factors such as innovation and sound management.

I can't believe you guys are using assets to say a company is bigger than another.

assets

• Google 40.5 billion USD
• Microsoft 78 billion USD
• Oracle 47 billion USD
• ebay 18 billion USD
• Apple 48 billion USD

total = 231.5 billion USD

Sony = 230 billion USD

--> Sony as big as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle and eBay combined...

I think that proves that assets are not suited for a comparison.

Another thing to consider about this asset silliness is that a good chunk of the assets on the books probably belongs to Sony Financial Holdings Inc. These are not liquid assets. Yet as we're all to familiar, a company can have hundreds of billions in assets and wind up bankrupt. Again I'm not saying Sony will go bankrupt, just pointing out these assets are meaningless without context.

there have been three different ways proposed to determine which is larger so basically pick the data that supports your view point and argue that your view is right