Top tech companies

Title: Top 10 Tech Companies
Apple
Apple is gearing up for another huge year. It is on the verge of announcing the third generation of its stalwart iPad, no doubt with additional plans to conquer consumer's wallets. Last year was a banner year, of course, because of the passing of the company's iconic founder, Steve Jobs.

Under CEO Steve Cook, the company's annual revenues climbed to $108 billion, led by an 81% increase in iPhone sales -- a jump that doesn't factor in the runaway success of the iPhone 4S -- and a 334% spike in iPad sales, due in no small part to the revamped iPad 2. Increased sales across the board explain why shares soared 75% during the company's fiscal year to $495. 


IBM

In 1911, Big Blue began with the merger of three disparate-seeming businesses to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. Fast forward a century later, the company celebrated its 100th anniversary with record annual profit of $15.9 billion, a 7% year-over-year increase. 

Much of that came from healthy revenue growth in BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- business analytics, cloud services, and Smarter Planet, IBM's savvy ongoing campaign to solve real-world problems, from traffic congestion to water management. 


Google
For Google, 2011 proved a period of major change. Eric Schmidt passed the reins onto co-founder Larry Page in April, who not long after essentially streamlined the company into six major product areas, including search, social, mobile, and ads. 

Google made several acquisitions, including spending $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility and $125 million for Zagat. Consumer-facing services like Gmail, YouTube, and Google Reader saw significant updates, and the company finally unveiled its social network, Google. 

Android also continued to dominate. According to Andy Rubin, SVP of mobile, 700,000 Android devices are now activated on any given day. 


Amazon
Unlike many other large tech companies, Amazon is comfortable sacrificing large profits in the short-term for long-term gains. That's why, despite the fact that 2011 revenues climbed to $48 billion, net income dropped 55% to $631 million. 

The company leveled much of its capital at expansion efforts, including plans to open 17 new fulfillment centers. Later in the year, Amazon unleashed the Kindle Fire, a tablet which by one estimate may have sold sold as many as 6 million units last holiday season. 


EMC
As EMC sees it, the number of data sources and amount of actual available data are both expected to grow exponentially: 50 times what they are now over the next decade. 

The data storage company seems poised to benefit thanks to a variety of hardware and software storage systems and cloud-based solutions that help clients manage massive amounts of data, a.k.a. big data. Revenues for its latest quarter were up 62% to nearly $3.1 billion.


Intuit
Best known for products like TurboTax or QuickBooks, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company provides business and financial management services to small and medium-sized organizations and individuals, with 33% of revenues coming from consumer tax products. 

For Intuit, 2011 proved a good year. Profits rose to $634 million on $3.9 billion in revenues, up 11% year over year, with the Small Business Group and Consumer Tax segments being the largest drivers. 


Adobe
For the multimedia software maker, 2011 marked a significant change in strategy. Adobe made a concerted push away from its own Flash products towards the rapidly growing HTML5 web standard by launching a compatible Web animations tool called Edge. 

Net income was nearly $833 million on revenues of $4.2 billion, beating the company's own target of 10% growth set at the beginning of year.


Symantec
The world's largest maker of security software rebounded from a sales dip in 2010, reporting annual revenues last year of nearly $62 billion. Much of the upward tick had to do with Symantec's strategy, which involved tailoring its security software to take advantage of three key trends: mobile devices, cloud computing, and virtualization. 


EBay
Founded in 1995 as an online auction site for users to sell and buy goods, eBay is now one of the largest global commerce and payments presences. In 2011, it continued to impress earning $3.2 billion in profits on sales of nearly $12 billion, Much of that was driven by PayPal, which the company acquired in 2002. The popular payments service added roughly one million new users each month last year, driving total PayPal payments up 29% overall.


Title: Top 10 IT Companies