According to journalists Wired, Google now has the maximum "X-factor" in terms of strategic vision and advanced technology. In the second and third places - Apple and Samsung.
The most innovative companies set the fashion in the global business, be it IT, genetic engineering, the automotive industry or the development of computer games. They are equal to competitors, analysts are looking at them to understand in which direction the market will develop. Companies from the annually updated list of
Wired 40 are constantly developing innovative products and services, and are also happy to buy interesting startups.
The main event of this year is the release of
Google in the first place, which is ahead of the previous leader
Apple . Last year, the “Apple” championship was explained by the triumphant popularity of the iTunes / iPod combination. Today, legitimate leadership has returned to the search giant, who every year invariably surprises the public with new developments.
Korea's Korean consumer electronics giant
Samsung retained third place. Of course, if 32 thousand engineers are working on the development of new products (this year the staff of the R & D centers was doubled), and the research budget is $ 40 billion!
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Internet companies are still occupying the top of the charts. Until now, they are considered technological and very promising. For example,
Yahoo (5th place) is increasing its attendance: with 3.5 billion hits per day, it retains the title of the most popular portal on the Internet.
Amazon's largest online store (6; -2) has lost ground, although it continues to actively invest in research projects such as the innovative search engine
A9 . At the 19th and 20th places in the ranking are located two more Internet companies:
eBay and
Infospace . The first one lost nine positions in a year, but with the purchase of a startup Skype proved its commitment to innovation. The second company just now hit the list. Surviving the dotcom boom, Infospace is now trying to fulfill itself in the mobile content market, and it is doing well for it.
The purchase of Myspace, the largest social networking site on the Internet, was enabled by
News Corp. for the first time in its history, to enter the list of the most innovative companies in the world - and it immediately jumped up to 9th place. “Buying Myspace gave the corporation a digital heart,” wrote Wired journalists.
Among the leaders in the list are many exclusively American companies that operate only in the US market and do not go abroad. This is the
Netflix DVD rental network (14th; +1); America's largest broadband providers are
Verizon (22; new on the list) and
Comcast (39; -8).
From the representatives of the computer and telecommunications business, the list includes the developers of corporate software
SAP (10; +1) and
Salesforce.com (15; +5), the market leader in the offshore programming
Infosys (11; -2), telecommunications giant
Cisco (12; + 1), computer games developer
Electronic Arts (13: -7), manufacturers of hardware
IBM (18; -4),
Nvidia (21; +3),
Flextronics (23; -1),
Intel (24; -5) ,
EMC (26; -3),
Lenovo (29; new) and
TSMC (30; +4).
One of the main losers of the year is
Microsoft , which dropped from 28th to 36th place and urgently needs innovative restructuring of the business, otherwise it may disappear altogether from the rating, as happened this year with
Dell and
Nokia .
Biotechnology and genetic engineering are louder and louder. This year, the list included such companies as
Genentech (4th place; +3 positions from last year), as well as
Medtronic (16; +2), which created an implant-defibrillator, which is painlessly implanted into the patient's heart muscle. The device measures pulse, pressure, temperature and publishes all the information on the Internet, where it is studied by the attending physician. The manufacturer of genetically modified cereals
Monsanto (+2) is on the 25th place, on the 27th - the creator of Kevlar products and other industrial biotech
DuPont (new in the list); on the 35th, the manufacturer of
Gen-Probe genetic tests. The pharmaceutical giant
Pfizer (-8) closes the list.
Among automotive companies,
Toyota is recognized as the most innovative (7th place; +1), whose hybrid engine has done a lot of noise all over the world with its absolutely silent operation.