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"&amp;lt;vc&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;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.&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;\r\n\r\nIn its annual list, &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Forbes&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; ranks the &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/05/02/the-forbes-fast-tech-25-our-annual-list-of-growth-kings/\"&amp;gt;fastest-growing&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; tech companies and found that Apple's ascension shows no signs of stopping in the near future despite years of &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/04/24/apple_profits_surge_94_on_sales_of_351m_iphones_118m_ipads.html\"&amp;gt;record earnings&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.\r\n\r\nTo 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. \r\n\r\nComing 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.\r\n\r\nApple 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.\r\n\r\n&amp;lt;div align=\"center\"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;img src=\"http://photos.appleinsider.com/12.05.11-ForbesTop25.jpg\" alt=\"Forbes Fast Tech 25\" width=\"329\" height=\"546\" border=\"0\"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span class=\"minor2\"&amp;gt;Top ten fastest growing tech companies. | Source: &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Forbes&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;\r\n\r\nFollowing 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."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/05/11/apple_finishes_second_on_forbes_list_of_fastest_growing_tech_companies>