Local firms in top ranks of ‘BusinessWeek’ listing

Four Taiwanese information technology (IT) companies have made the top 10 of BusinessWeek’s 2009 InfoTech 100.

Inventec Co (英業達) was ranked No. 4 and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) took seventh place, followed by Wistron Corp (緯創) in eighth and Acer Inc (宏碁) in 10th.

Taiwan had the most companies in the top 10. The US had three.

With the help of Standard & Poor’s Compustat, the magazine combed the financial results of tens of thousands of publicly traded businesses and ranked technology companies based on four criteria — shareholder return, return on equity, total revenues and revenue growth — and ranked them by aggregates.

Amazon.com came in at No. 1 for the second consecutive year, followed by Oracle Corp at No. 2. Germany’s SAP AG placed third, IBM Corp was at No. 5, India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd was sixth and China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) was ninth.

Six other Taiwanese companies made the top 100 — Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) placed 26th and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) was at No. 40, followed by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) eight places back. Compal Electronic Inc (仁寶) was No. 50 and Simplo Technology Co (新普) was two places further down.

The magazine’s Web site said the survey was limited to IT companies that had annual revenues of at least US$500 million, whose share prices had fallen by less than 50 percent and whose revenues had declined by less than 5 percent.

Telecommunications companies were excluded because many have monopoly or near-monopoly power that may give them an advantage over competitors, the Web site said.

The list will be published in next Monday’s edition of BusinessWeek, which will include an interview with Quanta Computer chairman Barry Lam (林百里) on the firm’s development and challenges.

Local industry analysts said one thing the four Taiwanese companies in the top 10 have in common is that they have benefited from the rise of netbooks.

Asked in the interview if netbook sales would eat into sales of more expensive notebooks, Lam said Quanta’s sales had continued to expand despite the growth of the netbook market.

“The revenues keep growing, which means [people] are buying more netbooks than notebooks. The replacement speed is faster. So we keep making good profits ... Our net profit increased in Q1 compared to a year ago,” Lam was quoted as saying.