Investors and tech enthusiasts are focused on the new. New companies, new products, and new technologies! But in 2015, we didn't have any notable new products.
The real success comes from companies that have a technology product that has become an integral part of all of our lives. Think Windows, Google's browser, and the iPhone.
The five companies that dominated this year didn't shock the world with a new product, but all 5 were unified and focused on their goal? and they managed to dominate in 2015.
Uber
2015 was the year that the world's largest startup became part of the everyday vocabulary of the United States, just as Google for the past decade. The phrase "Let's take Uber" has replaced "Let's call a cab."
Uber continued its smart strategy of making its app available always and everywhere, which is very expensive and not something other apps do.
Uber remains private and limits its stock market trading, but its recent valuation of $62.5 billion places it in a very high position .
Facebook was already present in everyone's daily lives before this year, but the company consolidated its profits in 2015 after managing to go from a place where people share news with their family to one of the leading communications companies in the world.
Forget Apple's iMessage, Facebook with its Messenger app and Whatsapp apps unites over a billion people with each other.
Instagram has become the favorite social app for teens, which is okay since it's owned by Facebook. Facebook is also slowly becoming one of the top destinations for online video. It's also starting to scare the news industry by becoming the most common place where people share news.
The biggest evidence of Facebook's dominance is the numbers of its two main rivals. Twitter's monthly users have declined this year, and LinkedIn is doing well but has about 100 million monthly users compared to Facebook's 1.55 billion.
Amazon
Like Facebook, Amazon was present in most people's lives, but this year it continued to dominate with half of Americans doing their holiday shopping there.
But many people didn't realize how important Amazon was to businesses as well. In 2015, it became clear that Amazon was having a lot of success with its Amazon Web Services business, which allows companies to outsource their IT needs to Amazon rather than having to build and maintain their own data centers. So far, the service has been very profitable and is expected to be even more so in 2016.
It is noted that in 2015 alone, Amazon had revenue of $7 billion, while its stock more than doubled by up to 125%.
Salesforce
Salesforce is the No. 1 and fastest-growing entry in a product category called CRM (Customer relationship management) that helps salespeople track all their sales information. In fact, the company's revenue is growing at a 25% annual rate, and as CEO Marc Benniof continues to show off its earnings to investors, it's growing revenue faster than any other sales company.
Salesforce has become a major player in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, being the number one investor in cloud software companies.
Netflix
2015 was an amazing year for Netflix with a dozen new shows, several Emmy nominations, and international expansion.
But the important thing here is that TV viewing habits are starting to change. Primetime ratings plummeted this fall, and the number of U.S. households with cable subscriptions began to decline for the first time this year.
The decline of cable television now seems like a reality, and Netflix holds first place as the main creator of live entertainment.
Netflix had the best performance this year of any tech company on the stock market with a rise of over 144%.
