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Apple finishes second on Forbes list of fastest growing tech companies

Despite being a monolith of a company, Apple jumped up 14 spots on the Forbes Fast Tech 25 list on an acceleration of growth even after years of posting record quarterly numbers.

In its annual list, Forbes ranks the fastest-growing tech companies and found that Apple's ascension shows no signs of stopping in the near future despite years of record earnings.

To create the list, over 5,000 publicly traded tech companies with a minimum revenue of $150 million and minimum market value of $500 million were examined to find the most profitable.

Coming out on top was LinkedIn which saw a 115 percent revenue increase over the past 12 months with stock value up 144 percent since its IPO last year. The social networking company posted $522 million in sales and has a three-year average sales growth of 89 percent, the highest of the list's top 25.

Apple placed second with a 63 percent year-to-year growth in sales that amounted to a competition-crushing $142.36 billion in revenue. The nearest company on the list was ninth-place computer programmer Cognizant Technology Solutions with $6.1 billion in sales. Apple enjoyed a three-year average sales growth of 43 percent.


Top ten fastest growing tech companies. | Source: Forbes

Following the iPad maker was Qlik Technologies, a business analytics software firm that managed $337 million in sales which translated to a 37 percent increase over the past year. Cloud-based healthcare service Athenahealth and data service provider Equinix rounded out the top five with sales growths of 34 percent and 27 percent, respectively.