The economic news has been so bad of late, it's actually difficult to imagine that some businesses are profitable. It's easy to get sucked into the abyss of huge layoffs, high unemployment figures and generally negative fall-out from the economic meltdown, but in spite of all this, there are technology companies that are making boat loads of cash and doing just fine.
One caveat here: Earnings can be interpreted in a number of ways. It seems either you made money or you didn't, but there are a number of factors that go into this. With that in mind, I give you give you five tech companies making money:
1. Apple
As incredible as it may seem, a company that sells expensive consumer electronics is making money in the worst recession in 50 years, but Macworld reports that Apple had record profits last quarter. In fact, it made more money last quarter (over $10 billion dollars) than in any quarter in its impressive history. I wrote about Apple's dazzling performance in Zune & iPod: A Tale of Two MP3 Players and The Economy May Stink, but Apple Comes Out Smelling Like a Rose.
2. Akamai
The content delivery network company (CDN) may not be a household name, but it helps deliver the content of some of the world's biggest web sites. Its extensive customer list includes Adobe, MTV Network and Fox Interactive (to name just a few). FierceOnlineVideo reports that Akamai surprise analysts by posting record revenue last quarter, a 16 percent year over year increase.
3. Open Text
Open Text is a content management company, which had itself a fine most-recent quarter. It reported profits were up 14 percent over the same time period last year and this is a company that sells large-scale enterprise software solutions, the kind that are supposedly being cut right now. Yet Open Text has continued to thrive in this hostile atmosphere.
4. Amazon
You might expect that Amazon.com would have taken a big hit along with the rest of the retail sector in the last quarter, but you would be wrong. PaidContent.org reports that Amazon had decent growth of 9 percent driven by demand for its eBook reader, the Kindle.
5. IBM
Big Blue had itself a nice quarter again proving that companies are not scaling back all large hardware and software projects as you would expect in times like these. ZDNet.co.uk reports that IBM profits were up a healthy 12 percent from the previous year's quarterly earnings.
So there you have it: five companies making money amidst the horrible economic backdrop and I didn't even have to search that hard to find these. Of course during my research I came across companies that had terrible quarters, but there is certainly positive news out there and it helps to know that it's not all gloom and doom.