Despite its continuing troubles, Research in Motion Ltd. ranks first in this year’s Branham 300 list of Canada’s top ICT companies by revenue.
RIM took in $20.2 billion inrevenue in 2011,dwarfing second-place BCE Inc.’s $9 billion and Rogers Communications‘$7.9 billion. The annual list is compiled by Ottawa-based IT consultingfirm The Branham Group.
This year’s report also notes that Canada’s ICT sector overall manageda strong performance in the midst of a soft global economy. The 250companies listed generated combined revenues of $82.65 billion in 2011,a jump of 11.7 per cent from 2010 and a new Branham 300 record thattops the previous benchmark of $75.9 billion set in 2008.
Even when RIM’s sales for the past two years are extracted from thelist, the remainder of the 250 firms saw their revenues increase by acombined 5.6 per cent last year, according to a Backbone magazinestoryon this year’s list.
“This is a strong indicator that Canadian technology sector companiesof all sizes experienced improved market conditions in 2011,” the storynotes. “It is clear that the Canadian tech industry has now completedits turnaround and recovered from the economic downturn that stalledits growth over the past three years.”
Hardware and infrastructure companies led the way with a combined 20.5per cent sales growth in 2011, followed by a 17 per cent growth insoftware sector sales.
Branham also released a list of Canada’s 25 most promising ICT firms.The list, ordered alphabetically rather than by revenue, includessocial video firm Keek and online accounting company Wave Accounting.Many of the startups that made past editions of this list – such asRadian6, Rypple and Five Mobile – havesince been acquired by largeU.S. firms.