One thing has become very clear through the years. The great powerhouse’s of the Information Technology industry continue to drive innovation- either through their own R&D or through purchasing innovative technologies for integration into their offerings. Those who want to track what is coming next should closely watch the big IT firms.
But which ones should we watch? The bad news is there is no perfect method. But a key measure of note is the market capitalization of a company. The market cap is the total dollar value of all outstanding shares of a company (share price times shares outstanding). It is a market consensus of a company’s equity. For a CTO or other technologist, it can also be a general indicator of staying power, vision and ability to deliver, since you don’t get a high market cap in the IT world without those factors.
The CTOvision.com list of Tech Titans includes IT firms with a market cap of over $14B. I’ve built a Google spreadsheet, tied it to live financial data, and now have a dynamic graphic of the market cap of the biggest tech firms. I also use automated search tools to scrub news feeds from these sources and use that information to help drive assessments elsewhere on the CTOvision.com site, including assessments on the future of IT.
The companies tracked on the list are: Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Qualcomm, SAP, EMC, Sony, Dell, Yahoo, Adobe, VMware and Symantec.
The following graphic is a up to date snapshot of the market cap of these top tech titans:
There have been some changes since last report. In general, market caps remain strong! That sounds good for American IT, since most of these firms are US firms. The order has shifted around a bit. Microsoft is still number one. Apple has moved back to the number two spot. Google and IBM are pretty much even, and Cisco rounds out the top five. Oracle, HP and Intel round out the top leadership positions and then there is a definite cut between them and the next tier of firms which run from Qualcomm down to Symantec.
Want to kick off a search for more data/news on these Technology Firms? Click on the links below to bring up news on each:
Microsoft (MSFT) | Apple (AAPL) | IBM | Google (GOOG) | Cisco (CSCO) | Intel (INTC) | Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) | Oracle (ORCL) | QualComm (QCOM) | SAP | EMC | Sony (SNE) |DELL | Yahoo! (YHOO) | Adobe (ADBE) | VMware (VMW) | Symantec (SYMC)
For tracking purposes, a snapshot from December 2009 is presented below. Notice the shift from the one above?
The September 2009 List is below:
