First Apple went past Exxon Mobil to become the world’s most valuable company. Now, it has gone ahead of Google to claim the number technology company spot in terms of share price. Experts are tipping the company be the first to blow past $1 trillion in market capitalization. Yahoo! Finance takes a look at the top technology companies in terms of market cap listed on the NASDAQ.
1. Apple: $590.82 billion The cream of crop among technology companies is Apple. Already the world’s most valuable company, it is tipped to become the first company to blow past the $1 trillion mark. There were some concerns about growth slowing down after the demise of its iconic founder Steve Jobs died but Tim Cook has been a worthy successor. What’s next? How about a refurbished Apple TV.
2. IBM: $238.07 billion The servers to services behemoth sits pretty in the number two spot. ‘Big Blue’ the 100 plus year old company, has gone through many changes and braved stormy weather when the technology landscape kept changing and its business models were under question. It has emerged unscathed and continues to look optimistically at the future.
3. Microsoft: $264.48 billion Some would say no Microsoft, no PC industry. The iconic company that was the poster child of the PC revolution continues to crank up huge revenues and profits. It survived the browser wars with Netscape and now battles Google, Apple and Facebook for technological supremacy.
4. Google: $163.11 billion The search giant was once the top of the heap in terms of technological cool and innovation. That title is now a two-horse race between Facebook and Apple. But Google continues to be one of the hottest technology companies globally. Its big bets are Google+, which is its attempt at social media and Andriod, its mobile effort.
5. Oracle: $148.56 billion The enterprise software and hardware company started off selling database systems and has grown from strength to strength mainly through a string of acquisitions. The biggest of which were PeopleSoft, Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems and Agile Software. Larry Ellison, its charismatic co-founder-CEO has been at the helm throughout its history.
6. Intel: $140.19 billion Moore’s Law on computing power doubling in complexity every two years may not still hold true. But Intel is at the bleeding edge when it comes to innovation in the microprocessor industry. It has been continuously introducing new architectures every few years that increases computing capability and at the same time reduce power consumption. But in a world where new computing devices like tablets and smart phones are becoming popular Intel will have to innovate at a much faster scale than it ever did.
7. Qualcomm: $113.65 billion The mobile phone chip giant Qualcomm has a rich history of innovation. Currently it has set its sights on entering the PC microprocessor market which is a big decision considering that its core business is that of mobile chipsets. But considering its past performance, this should be another market that it will crack.
8. Cisco: $108.9 billion Cisco is the global leader in networking and its hardware is at the heart of the internet. The company has been through its share of ups and downs and last year announced a series of layoffs. John Chambers, its CEO believes that all future growth will be dependent on international markets, especially emerging markets such as India and Brazil. Expecting significant business coming its way from Brazil, Cisco announced that its plans to invest $545 million to build a technology centre and expand its manufacturing capacity.
9. Amazon: $88.46 billion The e-commerce company started by Jeff Bezos began by selling books, but now sells almost anything that can be sold online. It has also diversified, offering cloud computing based services and hardware devices like the Kindle. Amazon has been successful in all its diversifying and at the same time growing its core e-commerce business.
10. EMC: $59.95 billion Buoyed by cloud computing and ‘big data’, EMC is currently going through a purple patch and expects a strong showing in terms of revenues. As more and businesses, big and small climb aboard the IT as a service model that has cloud computing at its core EMC stands to benefit. Initially just focused on data storage, the company offers most of the hardware and software services required for businesses to switch to the IT as a service model. However, big competitors like IBM and HP wont sit still and watch EMC eat their lunch.
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