Apple Tops List Of World's Most-Admired Companies
Since 1997, Fortune has partnered with Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, to survey approximately 15,000 industry executives and financial analysts in 64 industries to determine the company that has the strongest reputation, both in its industry segment and across multiple other segments. In 2008, the survey combined the previously separate listings of most admired U.S. and global companies into a single listing.
Companies in the survey are rated using attributes like quality of management, quality of products and services, innovativeness and financial soundness, with industry groupings determined using the Fortune 1000 listing and the Global 500 listing.
Although Apple came out on top in the survey, and also placed first in the innovation category, it wasn't the top-ranked company within the Computers industry segment; that honor went to Xerox. In this segment, Hewlett-Packard placed third, Sun Microsystems placed fifth and Dell placed sixth.
Other notable tech companies represented in the list include IBM (17th place), HP (30th place), Cisco Systems (31st place), Intel (36th place), Nokia (42nd place), Best Buy (44th place), AT&T (48th place) and Samsung (50th place).
The survey also lists Circuit City as number three on the list of least-admired companies.