Analyst firm Gartner Inc. today published a report ranking the top information technology industry companies based on their worldwide revenues, and it’s little surprise who’s on top: Apple Inc. But how long will it reign?

Gartner said the list is designed to help business leaders understand how much gear and services the top tech firms actually sell. It said the list should be useful in a world where relatively new companies such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. battle it out against more established firms such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

The list ranks 100 companies in total, including big names such as Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., plus a number of lesser-known firms that sell hardware and software directly to enterprises. Gartner reckons the ranking will be useful in a constantly-changing tech landscape.

“The needs of IT buyers are shifting,” said John-David Lovelock, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “CEOs are focused on growth and are more focused on realizing business outcomes from their IT spend.”

iPhone maker Apple topped Gartner’s list by some distance, with $218 billion in IT revenues in 2016, about $79 billion more than second-place Samsung Group. Google, Microsoft and IBM round out the top five. The top three vendors can attribute their size to an alignment with the “Nexus of Forces,” which Gartner defines as the “convergence of social, mobility, cloud and information that drive new business scenarios.”

But although Apple’s lead is substantial, Gartner noted that it may not always be the case as the smartphone market slows down.

The biggest threat to Apple’s dominance looks like Google, the only one of the top five to display any revenue growth over to the previous year. The search engine giant saw its revenues rise from $74.9 billion in 2015 to $90.1 billion in 2016. In contrast, Apple’s revenues declined from $235 billion in 2015.

Gartner said this shift could see new companies break into the top five in the not-too-distant future. Amazon, for example, came in 12th in 2016, whereas it would have ranked just 20th based on its 2015 IT revenues.

The firm said that as enterprises increasingly digitize their products and services, “digital giants” such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, plus Chinese firms Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., could end up taking over the digital experience. Indeed, by 2021, Gartner reckons that 20 percent of all activities an individual engages in will involve at least one of the top seven digital giants.

“Digital giants effectively become gatekeepers for any business that delivers digital content and services to consumers,” Lovelock said. “Any company that wants to engage consumers in, or through, their digital world will have to consider engaging with one or more of these digital giants.”

Although the focus of these digital giants has historically been in the consumer, citizen and employee world, they have a big opportunity to take the lead in the business-to-business world.

“In the B2B world of selling technology solutions to large enterprises, some of the digital giants have already had significant impact,” Lovelock said. “For example, Amazon Web Services’ cloud is disrupting enterprise hardware and software businesses dramatically. Apple’s iOS devices are dominant within enterprise mobility, and Google’s presence beyond search into browsers, cloud office and more is growing.”

Image: Håkan Dahlström/Flickr