Apple Drops from 1st to 17th Spot in Ranking of 'World's Most Innovative Companies'

Tech giant Apple recently lost its top place in Fast Company‘s rankings of the “World’s most innovative companies,” falling all the way down to 17th on the list.

Fast Company recently published its annual rankings of the top 50 most innovate companies in the world. Last year, Apple ranked top of the list, but in 2019 the company dropped to 17th place. Chinese tech firm Meituan Dianping, which “expedites the booking and delivery of services such as food, hotel stays, and movie tickets,” achieved the top spot on the list this year after the company facilitated $33.8 billion dollars worth of transaction for more than 350 million in 2018.

Ranking higher than Apple on the list were companies such as the Singapore-based ride-hailing company Grab, the NBA, The Walt Disney Company, personal stylist e-commerce service Stitch Fix, Square, Oatly, Twitch, Shopify, and Alibaba Group. Fast Company did note that Apple had made some innovation over the past year, such as the debut of the company’s new A12 iPhone processor. Fast Company stated:

Apple’s most impressive new product of 2018 wasn’t a phone or a tablet, but a chip: the A12 Bionic. Debuting in last fall’s iPhones, it’s the industry’s first processor based on a seven-nanometer manufacturing process. The A12’s 6.9 billion transistors deliver dramatically faster performance, lower power consumption, and more raw muscle for intensive applications.

In 2017 Apple received the first place ranking on the list for their unveiling of the iPhone X, the Apple Watch Series 3, ARKit, and the company’s developments in the medtech area with CareKit and ResearchKit. Apple did, however, top the list in “Consumer Electronics” beating firms such as Google, Microsoft, and Dell.