The Top 10 Fastest Growing Tech Companies in the USA

Forbes, the famous list maker that we all love, has put together a list of the top 25 fastest growing tech companies for the year of 2013, of which we are just interested in 10. From what it's showing, Facebook and Apple aren't even at number one, though they are the close runner-ups in the contest. Some other interesting companies were brought to our attention through this and it is definitely cool to see what innovations are being ingeniously brought to fruition in today’s fast-growing tech world.

In first place, it was the professional and social connecting network LinkedIn that led the pack. In the last 12 months, it accumulated sales of 1.1 billion dollars and it's only looking up for them, as their estimated 3 year average sales growth is set at 102%. The company with the young CEO Jeffrey Weiner has more than 90 million members in over 200 countries and territories and it's a great place to engage with others in a professional setting. According to Forbes, the heavy growth is due to LinkedIn's recruiting tools, advertising and subscriptions.
The next runner up is of course Facebook whose revenue is 5x that of LinkedIN. That being said, the company isn't heading uphill quite so easily as the other social network. Their recent Facebook Home flop and HTC First disaster could be a cause for this. Recent reports say that teens, who for the longest time were the FB target audience, are now moving away to other social networking services as too many grown-ups are using FB now. The huge blue giant brought in 5.5 billion in the last 12 months and had a mere 36% growth in sales in the last 12 months. For the next three years, it looks like they will be at a steady 87% sales growth rate, unless Mark Zuckerberg has some new tricks up his sleeve.

That didn't work out as planned!'/ © Facebook/DailyFinance/AndroidPIT

Apple made its way to third place. The computer hardware and software company hit an earth-shattering 169.104 billion in the last 12 months, though their growth is even slower than that of Facebook and their shares are way down. The growth sales rate in the last year was at 19% while there is a predicted 55% growth rate for the next 3 years to come. According the slide-show master Forbes, Apple stands as the N. 1 in the World's most powerful brands and is No. 26 as one of the most innovative companies. This is a huge drop from its 5th place ranking back in 2011.

And the remaining top ten companies are....

3D Systems' niche is based on printing 3D objects from scratch: quite an interesting concept. IPG Phototonics has created some fiber-optic lasers for welding. EPAM Systems is an IT outsourcing and software development shop, while Shutterstock is an online picture library and the the ring-leader in microstock image rentals. InvenSense has created miniscule gyroscopes and accelerometers. These are used to track motion in tablets, smartphones, TV remotes and video game controllers: it's safe to say that they will only see growth in the years to come. Finally in 9th and 10th place, Shutterfly has invented greeting cards, mugs and albums while Opentable is a great app for reserving restaurant tables.

 The top 10 companies are a real mix: social networking, digital imagery, online photos and reservations. © Forbes

It’s interesting to see which companies are doing so well and it gives a clear indication in which direction technology is going. Though we have put a big emphasis on social networking as underlined by Facebook and LinkedIn's success, there's still room for smaller, more innovative companies to grow as well. What’s more, most of these companies are set in California!

iOS Platform Of Choice For Shoppers, All But Biggest Companies Focus On iOS And Android

     

Apple retains the top spot when it comes for uses making actual purchases on their mobile devices, according to a new Forrester report. iOS shoppers are around 30 percent more likely to make a purchase on their device, and about 15 percent more likely to do product research on their smartphones and tablets than Android users, the survey of 58,000 U.S. respondents found.

But despite the discrepancy, companies are still targeting both platforms en masse. The survey also found that 99 percent of ebusiness professionals surveyed during the study intended to launch either a native or hybrid iOS app by the end of 2013, and 96 percent were also targeting the same for Android. Beyond Goole and Apple, however, there’s a very steep drop off in interest, and only larger companies with big budgets are really looking further afield at companies and platforms like BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

That’s because around 41 percent of ebusiness pros have only $500,000 or less to spend on their mobile budgets, and 56 percent have less than $1 million. That money can only go so far, and still pales in comparison to general marketing budgets, and even budgets devoted to general web-facing property. This alone is a prime reason why cross-platform solutions will continue to succeed, even as developers debate the merits of cross-platform technologies like HTML5 vs. native tools.

And while the market appears unified between Apple and Google, that actually belies a fair amount of fragmentation that occupies sufficient developer time and resources within those two larger camps, Forrester points out. Developing for either iOS or Android is a much more resource-intensive affair than it once was, despite efforts made by both companies to encourage users to upgrade and to make it easier to build software compatible across OS versions and device particulars.

In some ways, fragmentation is actually a boon to both Apple and Google in terms of helping them maintain their platform advantage. The more resources developers have to devote to catering to those top two platforms, the fewer they have available to spread out on a third or fourth horse, to the continued detriment of smaller players like BlackBerry and Microsoft. It’s easy to paint fragmentation as a problem, and in terms of developer time and spend, it definitely is, but holding on to the market lead may be an unintended consequence for the mobile top dogs.