
<p>Hitachi Ltd., which quit making TV sets in 2012 to focus on industrial-power and infrastructure units, is poised to surpass Canon Inc. in market value as camera sales are sapped by smartphones.</p><p>Bloomberg has tracked the market capitalizations of Hitachi, Canon, Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp. since February 2004, when Canon was in a rally that peaked in July 2007, shortly after Apple Inc. launched the iPhone.</p><p>Hitachi is the only company in the group worth more than when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. It overtook Sony and Panasonic in 2011 and is on pace to overtake the world's biggest camera maker.</p><p>"It's just a matter of time before the market caps of Hitachi and Canon flip," said Nobuyuki Fujimoto, senior market analyst at SBI Securities Co., the nation's biggest online brokerage. "Companies focusing on infrastructure business like Hitachi are healthy and preferable to consumer-technology firms."</p><p><a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/01/31/business/hitachi-to-top-canons-market-value/">Keep reading...</a></p>