This year's BusinessWeek 50 gives Apple the number one spot, up from the 14th place last year. Apple's mindshare has no doubt grown immensely over the past years with each product pulling the others along.

Even now, Apple is still gaining mindshare, in light of Microsoft's Vista most recent delay. Apple faces hardly any competition in the next Christmas season, and while analysts everywhere are predicting a slowdown of PC sales, many are also pointing at Apple as the way to go. The fact that Vista bears so many resemblances to OS X is also not helping, neither is the fact that Apple is very likely to release the next version of OS X by the time that Vista will reportedly ship. If Apple turns the engines to full speed and gets Leopard out the door before the Christmas season, it will mean even further incentive to buy Apple and stop waiting for the Microsoft version that keeps failing to arrive.

The Top 10 of The 2006 BusinessWeek 50:
1. Apple Computer - All those little white earbuds are a bona fide cultural phenomenon -and serious business for Apple. Booming sales of its iPod music players have propelled the Cupertino (Calif.) icon to the top of our list of the best corporate performers. Apple shows few signs of slowing down. Of the 42 million iPods sold since the line was introduced five years ago, 32 million were sold in 2005, including 14 million in a killer Christmas quarter. Apple's profits leapt 216% in 2005 on a 66% jump in sales. Investors are still bullish, not only for what Steve Jobs has done, but also for what lies ahead. Jobs, soon to be the biggest shareholder in Walt Disney Co. thanks to its recent purchase of his Pixar Animation Studios, has inked landmark deals with TV studios and other Old Media powers. If Apple can extend its portable music dominance into the living room, its remarkable recovery might have far to run.
2. WellPoint
3. Caremark Rx
4. UnitedHealth Group
5. Schlumberger
6. Occidental Petroleum
7. Halliburton
8. Qualcomm
9. Amgen
10. Aetna