July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple’s in the top 10 for the first time ever, Facebook hits the list, and Dell sells more than Google as Fortune Magazine released its Fortune 500 companies today, ranking the top 500 companies by global income.

Notable this year is Apple, with its whopping $156 billion in 2012 sales, jumping into the top 10 for the first time in its 37-year history. And Google, with its big $50 billion year, bulled its way up almost 20 spots to hit No. 55. Perhaps most impressive, however, is Facebook, which with the youngest CEO in the Fortune 500 made the list for the very first time at 487.

Ranking companies by income is a fairly arbitrary measure, since it reveals little about how much companies actually earn, but it does show scope and scale. A grain of salt is definitely indicated, however, as Google’s profits, for instance, are many multiples of Dell’s despite that Dell is ranked No. 51 and Google is No. 55.

Here are the 41 technology companies that Fortune included on its list.

• 6: Apple
• 15: HP
• 20: IBM
• 35: Microsoft
• 49: Amazon
• 51: Dell
• 54: Intel
• 55: Google
• 60: Cisco Systems
• 80: Oracle
• 131: Xerox
• 133: EMC
• 176: Computer Sciences
• 163: Jabil Circuit
• 194: Qualcomm
• 196: eBay
• 218: Texas Instruments
• 222: Western Digital
• 240: SAIC
• 267: CDW
• 270: Liberty Interactive
• 302: Applied Materials
• 304: Motorola Solutions
• 318: Micron Technology
• 326: Corning
• 327: Broadcom
• 352: Congnizant Technology Solutions
• 379: Symantec
• 408: NetApp
• 420: Sanmina
• 429: Harris
• 436: Booz Allen Hamilton Holding
• 441: NCR
• 473: Priceline.com
• 464: AMD
• 477: Avaya
• 482: Facebook
• 487: SanDisk
• 489: Pitney Bowes
• 494: Yahoo
• 499: CA Technologies

A couple of caveats:

I have not included telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, although a good argument can be made that they are now, primarily, technology companies, simply because Fortune did not classify them in any recognizable technology category. And I have included retailers like CDW and companies like Pitney Bowes, which Fortune classifies in categories like Computers, Office Equipment, and Information Technology Services.

One interesting note: While Facebook has the Fortune 500′s youngest CEO, Dole Food’s David Murdock, at 90 years old, is the Fortune 500′s oldest CEO.

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AMD has hired an Apple veteran to lead its chip software developer and a Qualcomm engineer to lead its system-on-chip efforts, according to Reuters. Apple’s Wayne Meretsky and Qualcomm’s Charles Matar will join another ex-Apple employee, Jim Keller, who had previously designed processors for iPhone and iPad.

A quick glance at AMD’s current lineup of chips reveals the likely reason: This company is not prepared for a future in which you can sell more chips and, perhaps, make more money in smartphones, tablets, and other devices versus desktop and laptop PCs. Amid the company’s processors for PCs, graphics cards, memory, and embedded solutions is only one solution for mobile: AMD’s Z-Series, announced late last year.

That’s a massive problem, as Intel’s lackluster earnings a few days ago showed. PC sales are down, and PC processor sales are down as well. This is not the first time we’ve heard this song.

So AMD needs to get up to speed, and quickly, expanding its Z-series and making it a processor family that tablet manufacturers want to use.

It’s worth noting that AMD recently announced that it would offer ARM-based processors in its server chips, a move that VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi compared to “a major league baseball team switching to football.” They’re not expected until 2014, and server chips are generally not identical to mobile chips, but it does mean the veteran PC chipmaker could be inching closer to ARM mobile chips as well, such as those used by Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and iPod, along with almost every other smartphone and tablet on the market.

The big question: Is this too little, too late for perpetually sad-sack AMD?

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The American taxpayer? She might hate it too.

The Institute for Policy Studies released a report this morning on 26 companies that pay their executives more than the entire corporation pays the U.S. government in taxes. The problem? Tax code structures that encourage high executive pay by allowing deductions for performance-based pay, for one.

The 26 firms, which have 537 foreign subsidiaries in tax havens like Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Gibraltar, each had an average of more than $1 billion in pre-tax income … and tax benefits averaging $163 million. And IPS estimates the four biggest direct tax subsidies cost taxpayers over $14 billion a year.

AMD paid chief executive Rory P. Read $15.6 million while paying negative $3 million in taxes (if only we all could pay negative taxes). AT&T paid Randall Stephenson $18.7 million while collecting a sweet tax check of negative $420 million. And Google’s new pet, Motorola, must have some good accountants: The company shows up on the list not once but twice.

Motorola Mobility showed up for CEO Sanjay Jha, paying him a whopping $47 million while paying precisely zero, zilch, and nada in U.S. corporate income tax. Of course, the company lost half a billion dollars in 2011: You need talented people to lose that much in just 12 months. And Motorola Solutions — the part of the original Motorola that Google did not buy — tossed Gregory Brown a relatively paltry $29.3 million while paying taxes of just $2 million.

It’s kind of what we said last week: In the income battle between the CEO and you, you’re not winning.

The full list:

Source: IPS

Companies that paid their CEO more than they paid in 2011 taxes

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

In a sign that ARM Holdings shareholders might be bracing for an acquisition in the near future by Oracle, shares of ARM bounced higher today after Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said his company would be on the hunt to pick up new chip companies to add to its computer hardware portfolio. Ellison made the comment to attendees of the Oracle OpenWorld 2010 conference in San Francisco yesterday.

U.S.-traded shares of ARM Holdings jumped 8.1 percent to $19.89 as of 9:33 a.m. PST, leading the way for the rest of the semiconductor stocks on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange semiconductor index — including Nvidia, up 4.4 percent, and Advanced Micro Devices, up 5.2 percent. The PHLX semiconductor index was up 3.6 percent.

Earlier this year, Oracle finalized its acquisition of server manufacturer and Java developer Sun Microsystems in a deal worth $7.4 billion, though the official announcement came in April last year. The European Commission had investigated the deal later that year over concerns that Oracle, a maker of commercial database management software, would stifle the MySQL open source database management software business within Sun.

Cambridge, England-based ARM has frequently been the subject of takeover speculation due to its close ties with Apple — it’s a partial developer of the Apple A4 processor found in the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. The company said that takeover candidates could easily access the technology by buying the chips rather than attempting to acquire the company, according to Bloomberg News.

[Photo: Oracle_Photo_Screenshots]