SEOUL, March 4 (Yonhap) - Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest maker of smartphones, flat screen televisions and memory chips, was ranked in 2012 as the third world's largest information technology (IT) in terms of market capitalization, a report showed Monday.
The technology giant saw his ranking rise two spots compared to fifth in 2011 and five places compared to eighth place in 2010, according to the report of the National Agency for Promotion of IT Industry (NIPA, according to their acronym). The state agency collected the data using the Reuters Knowledge service.
The data showed that Apple Inc. topped the list for the third consecutive year, while Google Inc. was placed in second place.
Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp. saw their rankings fall two places compared to the previous year to the fourth and fifth, while companies such as Oracle Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. entered the the top ten list.
The NIPA said the data underscored a surge of companies that are leading the trend of mobile and smart, and a decline in traditional IT firms that drove the age of computers and broadband.
The agency predicted a large data services, cloud computing and social as some major factors that determine the market capitalization of technology firms.
