Asian smartphone company HTC Corporation (TPE:2498) has surpassed the market cap of Finland based Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK). HTC’s market cap has grown 30 times larger in the past 5 years. At one point yesterday, HTC was valued at $33.88 billion and Nokia was valued at $32.84 billion. Market cap is the stock market value of a company. It is the value of the company based on multiplying the share price of a company with the number of shares outstanding. HTC can attribute their success in the smartphone market through their operating system partnership with Google Android. However Nokia has a deal in the works with Microsoft for Windows Phone 7 smartphones. [SlashGear]

NASDAQ and the Consumer Electronics Association has announced the NASDAQ OMX CEA Smartphone Index. The Index combines a portfolio of 84 companies that are working on “building, design and distribution of handsets, hardware, software, and mobile networks associated with the development, sale and usage of smartphones.” Companies include Motorola, Google, Apple, RIM, Nokia and AT&T.

Today is Monday February 8 and Super Bowl is now over with the Saints taking the win. Congratulations to everyone in New Orleans. It is a sad day for Peyton Manning and friends, but there’s always next year. Here is your Pulse2.com technology news round up.

Google’s $1 Billion Display Ad Biz and Translator Phone

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This year, Google is expecting their display ads business to generate more than $1 billion. This is about 4% of their total sales this year. If $1 billion is achieved this year, this would be an increase of about 40% from the year before. [BusinessWeek]

Google is also rumored to be making software for a phone that would be capable of translating foreign languages on-the-fly. The software covers about 52 languages so far. [Times UK]

AOL Is Close To Selling ICQ

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According to sources with AllThingsD, AOL is close to selling off ICQ for a price that is near $200 million. ICQ has about 40-50 million active users across the world with a major penetration in Germany, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Israel. There is rumored to be about seven bids, four which are very serious. ICQ is based in Israel and has about 100 employees. ICQ is slightly profitable. [AllThingsD]

Loopt’s Local Ads

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Loopt and Mobile Spinach have partnered to provide special offers and discounts for local businesses. As of right now the service is available in San Francisco and the company expects to roll out the service to other major cities in the near future. Loopt has about 3 million users. [MediaPost]

Verizon Bans 4Chan

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4chan announced on Twitter that they have been “explicitly blocked” from Verizon. 4chan founder Christopher Poole attempted to reach Verizon to find out why they have been blocked, but Verizon was not able to give him a definitive answer as of yet. [ReadWriteWeb]

HTC Incredible

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Above is a photo that was sent to PocketNow.com and it is believed to be the Verizon HTC Incredible. The phone uses Android 2.1 with HTC Sense and there is a Snapdragon CPU inside. The phone would come with 256MB of RAM and there is a 3.5-3.7″ WVGA screen. [PocketNow]

Riddim Ribbon

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Tapulous has launched a new game called Riddim Ribbon. Tapulous decided that they wanted to move on beyond Tap Tap Revenge. The Riddim Ribbon game costs $2.99 and comes with several songs by The Black Eyed Peas. [Tapulous]

Nokia Class Action Lawsuit

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A class action complaint has been made against Nokia alleging that the phone company had committed securities fraud. The complaint was filed at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. [PCWorld]

TweetDeck Adds Flickr

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TweetDeck has created a new version of their desktop Adobe AIR-based software that allows you to view YouTube videos and add Flickr support within the software. The company has also increased the Twitter API requests for up to 350 API calls per hour. Posterous is also now supported. [Mashable]

Mobile@mail.ru has received an exclusive hands-on test for the Nokia E55.  More pics can be viewed by clicking on the image.

Andrew Cheatle was on a boat and his phone fell out into the sea.  It turns out that a 25 lb. cod fish ate the phone.  One week later, Cheatle’s girlfriend received a phone call from a fisherman saying that he found the phone in the fish.  The phone was still functional even after that journey.

“I was messing about with my dog and my phone must have fallen out and been swept out in the swell.  I kept calling it but I gave up hope after a couple of days,” stated Cheatle in an interview with The Sun UK.

Cheatle and his girlfriend were shopping for a new cellphone when the phone rang.

“I thought he was winding me up but he assured me he had caught a cod that morning and was gutting it for his fish stall and that my Nokia was inside it — a bit worse for wear,” stated Cheatle.  “I didn’t believe him but went to meet him and found it was my phone — a bit smelly and battered — but incredibly it still worked after I let it dry out.”