Top 10 Innovative Companies of 2011

Ranked 1: Apple Apple Inc. formerly Apple Computer, Inc., an American multinational corporation, that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers was established on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California. On January 6, 2011, the company opened their Mac App Store, a digital software distribution platform, similar to the existing iOS App Store. As of September 24, 2011, the company had 357 retail stores, including 245 stores in the United States and 112 stores internationally. Apple has recently been the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization, and the largest technology company in the world by revenue and profit. On October 4, 2011, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, which includes an improved camera with 1080p video recording, a dual core A5 chip capable of 7 times faster graphics than the A4, an "intelligent software assistant" named Siri, and cloud-sourced data with iCloud. On October 29, 2011, Apple purchased C3 Technologies, a mapping company, for $240 million.

Ranked 2: Twitter Twitter is an online social networking and micro blogging service that has redefined communication with a user retention rate of forty percent. It was created in July 2006 by Jack Dorsey and it has over 300 million users as of 2011, generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage, as well as phased out the "Old Twitter." Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once more to feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home button, the Connect and Discover buttons were introduced along with a redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site’s layout has been compared to that of Facebook.

Ranked 3: Facebook Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. As of July 2011, Facebook has more than 800 million active users. In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard microformat for the events’ venues, enabling the extraction of details to users own calendar or mapping applications. Since April 2011 Facebook users have had the ability to make live voice calls via Facebook Chat, allowing users to chat with others from all over the world. On July 6, 2011, Facebook launched its video calling services using Skype as its technology partner. It allows one to one calling using a Skype Rest API. On September 14, 2011, Facebook launched a Subscribe button. The feature allows users to follow public updates, and these are the people most often broadcasting their ideas. The site released major modification on September 22, 2011.

Ranked 4: Nissan Nissan Motor Company Ltd. (usually shortened to Nissan), a multinational automaker headquartered in Japan, was founded on December 26, 1933 by Masujiro Hashimoto, Kenjiro Den, Rokuro Aoyama, Meitaro Takeuchi and Yoshisuke Aikawa. Along with its normal range of models, Nissan also produces a range of luxury models branded as Infiniti. In its home market, Nissan became the second largest car manufacturer in 2011, surpassing Honda with Toyota still very much the dominant first. The Nissan VQ engines, of V6 configuration, have been featured among Ward’s 10 Best Engines for 14 consecutive years. Nissan is expected to use renewable energy to charge the Nissan Leafs that will be produced there in 2012.

Ranked 5: Groupon Groupon (a portmanteau derived from "group coupon") is a deal-of-the-day website that features discounted gift certificates usable at local or national companies. The idea for Groupon was created by now-CEO Andrew Mason and the company was launched in November 2008. On February 19, 2011 The Wall Street Journal reported that Groupon was preparing to launch in China. Groupon also expanded into the MENA region with its launch of Groupon UAE on June 16, 2011. Groupon New Zealand launched on 10 May 2011. From January 2010 through January 2011, Groupon’s U.S. monthly revenues grew from $11 million to $89 million. Groupon’s 2011 estimated revenues are in the $3 billion to $4 billion range. Groupon’s gross billings in October 2011 increased 1.5% to $147 million from $144 million in September 2011, according to independent data provider Yipit.

Ranked 6: Google Google Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation invested in internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. It was founded by Menlo Park, California, U.S on September 4, 1998. The company’s mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google’s algorithm was changed in March 2011, giving more weight to high-quality content possibly by the use of n-grams to remove spun content. In May 2011, unique visitors of Google surpassed 1 billion mark for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from a year ago with 931 million unique visitors. On September 28, 2011 the company has announced to build 3 data centers worth more than $200 million in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and the land has been owned by Google Inc. It will be operated between one to two years ahead. In late June 2011, Google soft launched a social networking service called Google+ that had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in the "limited" trial phase and 25 million users after four weeks in operation.

Ranked 7: Dawning information industry Dawning Information Industry (Shenzhen) Limited manufactures and sells high-tech computers and servers that owns more than 30 percent of the country’s high-performance computing (HPC) market. Dawning has manufactured some of the fastest supercomputers in the world including Nebulae, the second fastest computer in the June 2010 TOP500 list. The high-performance Dawning 6000, which has a projected speed of over one quadrillion operations per second, will incorporate the Loongson processor as its core. Li Guojie, chairman of Dawning Information Industry Company and director and academician of the Institute of Computing Technology, said research and development of the Dawning 6000 is expected to be completed in two years.

Ranked 8: Netflix Netflix, Inc., is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, and Latin America and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and started its subscription-based digital distribution service in 1999 and by 2009 it was offering a collection of 100,000 titles on DVD and had surpassed 10 million subscribers. In April 2011, Netflix announced 23.6 million subscribers. In summer 2011, Netflix announced they will expand into the European market, starting in Spain by 2012. In September 2011, Netflix completed the launch of streaming-content services in Latin America by launching in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America. In October 2011, it was announced that Netflix would be launching in the UK and Ireland in early 2012.

Ranked 9: Zynga Zynga, headquartered in San Francisco, is a social network game developer that develops browser-based games that work both stand-alone and as application widgets on social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. As of November 2011, Zynga’s games on Facebook have over 200 million monthly active users. Four of Zynga’s games, CityVille, Texas HoldEm Poker, FarmVille, and Empires & Allies, are among the top five most widely used game applications on Facebook, with CityVille having over 54 million monthly active users. In May of 2011, the company launched its most complicated game to date—Empires and Allies.

Ranked 10: Epocrates Epocrates, Inc., founded in 1998, is an American company based in San Mateo, California that makes various mobile health software applications under the "Epocrates" name, mostly for health care providers. Two Stanford students have founded it as a means to ease doctors’ burden of carrying around books to look up drug information, drug interactions, and dosing information. Since then, the company has transformed itself into a leading provider of clinical information and solutions to healthcare providers. By 2010 the company said it had 1 million users worldwide, including 40% of the physicians in the United States, and that it employed more than 250 people. For the current year, Epocrates projects revenues of $122 million–$125 million with EPS of $0.12–$0.15.