IBM ranks No. 1 because of its millions of mainframes in millions of suburban basements throughout the United States. This fast-expanding mainframe market is one that Apple fears even attempting to crack.
This survey not only reveals this fatal business-plan flaw by Apple; it reveals that Fortune and the public realize — even if Apple doesn't — that mainframes capable of predicting the weather in Schenectady in 2012 are the future, not some "mini," without even a keyboard, running blemish removals in a photo program.
Unless Apple changes direction, discarding its failed iPod and faint-hope iPhone in favour of mainframe construction, Apple, in two years, will have sunk to the bottom of the list — if its name, like that of Studebaker, even exists in anything but memory.
Fortune, at least, got it right.