The Ten Most Riveting Companies This Year

Some are new on the scene, kicking dirt into the eyes of the establishment companies, forcing behemoths like Google and Facebook pay attention – others have been around for a while and due to difficulties are greatly affecting the landscape around them. These are the most riveting companies of the year.

Uber

The ride-sharing service has garnered considerable controversy in 2014 as it continues to pick the pocket of traditional taxi services. Central London was brought to a standstill in June when Hackney cab drivers parked their cabs in the road in a protest against the ascent of Uber. The company was initially banned from operating in Germany until a Frankfurt judge overturned the ruling in September. Now it seems Uber have provoked the ire of the taxman as they have apparently been dodging service tax – it’s never a dull moment with these guys.

Xiaomi

Critics have accused them of ripping-off Apple’s philosophy – badly. But whatever they are doing it seems to be working, at least in emerging markets. Unlike Apple and Samsung, Xiaomi’s philosophy is to make little-to-no profit on the sale of their phones and then make profits on software and accessories. They continue to gain considerable marketshare in China and the far-East and may end up being a major player in the Western market too.

Netflix

2014 has really been the year that Netflix became a household name. The on-demand streaming service has surpassed over 50 million subscribers world-wide and has an operational presence in 41 countries around the world. Traditional broadcasting services have been slow to proffer a response to the presence of Netflix and other streaming services and for the time being it looks unstoppable.

Airbnb

This year Airbnb usurped the InterContinental Hotels Group and Hilton Worldwide as the world’s largest hotel chain – quite astonishingly it did all this without owning a single hotel. The rent-a-room service has over 800,000 listings in a mind-blowing 192 countries. The comparisons with Uber are obvious – though Airbnb has so far evaded Uber levels of controversy.

Manchester United

Despite its status as one of the world’s most valuable sports clubs, Manchester United’s failure to produce success on the pitch after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement will have alarmed the majority shareholders; the Glazer family. The company is the first example of a truly global sports club that is facing uncertain times within its area (football). The Glazer family sold almost 20% of their shares when the club was at the peak of its success and now the golden era is over, the value of the club and its shares will be rapidly decreasing. What happens to the club in terms of value will determine the financial ethos of sports clubs for the next century.

Bloomberg Philanthropies

The brainchild of Michael Bloomberg, the foundation was started as a means of consolidating Bloomberg’s charitable givings and philanthropic work and is now one of the most revered foundations in the world. It focuses its resources on five sectors; public health, the environment, government innovation, education and the arts; using sophisticated, data-driven stratagems to tackle such issues as overfishing and climate change.

Twitter

Twitter’s purchase of Vine a mere five months after it was founded showed how quick Jack Dorsey et al are to spot a winner. The video sharing service has gone from strength-to-strength and was the forth most downloaded free app of 2013. Like Twitter, Vine has enforced stringent restrictions on the amount of content that can be uploaded in one post – for Twitter it’s 140 characters, for Vine it’s six seconds. If Twitter continues to operate with such speed; identifying the hottest new apps and absorbing them into its fabric, it will surely grow to a size to challenge the dominance of Google and Facebook.

ASOS

ASOS is causing disruption but not the positive kind. The troubled online retailer of accessories and apparel has seen its shares fall by 67% since the start of the year and there are hints that it could be ripe for a takeover by Amazon. Sceptics are saying that Amazon will wait till the shares are lower (they remain very high despite the slump) but the temptation for Amazon to instantly expand into clothes may just prove to be too strong. The logistical operations and UK supply base are secure – a bit of tweaking and ASOS, as an Amazon subsidiary could once again be successful.

Duolingo

The language learning and crowdsourced text translation pattern won Apple’s ‘app of the year’ for 2013 and has usurped both Babel and Rosetta Stone as the most popular language learning app. What’s significant about Duolingo is that it’s free and therefore accessible to billions of people across the globe, meaning that its utilisation will be ever increasing. While it is far from perfect, the introduction of a programme to quickly and efficiently learn another language, that also algorithmically translates webpages has furthered the world’s connectivity.

AO

The Bolton based online electronics retailer has become the unlikeliest star of 2014 and will continue its meteoric rise with an expansion into Germany in 2015. AO has over 1.6 million ‘likes’ on Facebook and has somehow managed to popularise the distinctly unglamorous world of electronic goods retailing with quirky stunts and giveaways. With the traditional kitchen/electric goods retailers floundering, expect AO to increase its presence in the home.