Fortune Names Research In Motion World's Fastest Growing Firm

August 18, 2009 6:53 a.m. EST

New York, NY (AHN) - Canadian firm and Blackberry maker Research in Motion topped this year's Fortune Magazine's list of fastest growing firms. The Waterloo, Ontario firm landed on the top spot because it has become the favorite choice of consumers. RIM's Curve is the top-selling smartphone in the U.S. with a market share of 56 percent.

RIM, which recently questioned the sale of Nortel Network's wireless business to Telefonica Ericsson, had a three-year annual revenue growth rate of 77 percent and average earnings per share growth of 84 percent.

Since RIM started operations in 1984, its employees had grown four times over the past four years and it expects its workers to reach 12,000 by December. While cellphone sales have been falling the past few months, smartphone sales enjoyed a double-digit hike in 2009 due to the features of smartphones which permit owners to surf the Web, check their email and download application.

Globally, RIM's share in the smartphone market has steadily climbed up from 7 percent in 2006 to 20 percent by the first quarter of this year. Because RIM sold over 65 million phones to 28.5 million subscribers, Fortune said it had kept a dominant position in the smartphone business despite the success of its rival Apple's iPhone.

A day before Fortune announced its top 100 fastest growing companies, RIM launched its Blackberry App World in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela. It said more launches in other Latin American countries would follow.

The other companies that made it to the top 10 of Fortune's list are: chipmaker Sigma Designs of California, Chinese Internet firm Sohu.com based in Beijing, Georgia-based insurance firm Ebix, ads and syndicated show distributor DG FastChannel based in Texas, nitrogen fertilizer marker CF Industries Holdings in Illinois, Chinese online gaming company Shanda Interactive Entertainment in Shanghai, Oklahoma oil and gas driller Arena Resources, x-ray and MRI maker Bruker in Massachusetts and the second Canadian firm on the top 10 list, fertilizer maker Potash Corporation which is based in Saskatchewan.