MIT Technology Review annouces top 50 smartest companies

MIT Technology Review announced the world's top 50 smartest companies in 2016 Tuesday.

Among the annual top 50 smartest companies, Amazon ranked No. 1. MIT gave the world's largest online retailer the highest score for its Echo Dot, which responds to Amazon's voice command platform Alexa.

Coupang ranked at 44th place as the only Korean firm in the top 50. MIT said Coupang mimicked global e-commerce marketplace Groupon in its initial stage but has since attracted customers by introducing "rocket delivery," a service that guarantees same day delivery. MIT said the Korean firm became Korea's Amazon.

The Japanese companies listed on top 50 included Toyota, Fanuc and Japan's Line. Toyota was noted for the hydrogen-fueled Mirai. Fanuc develops robots based on machine learning, and Line, a subsidiary of Korea’s top Internet portal operator Naver, was praised for its technology that enables simultaneous phone calls by 200 people. Skype, the world's largest voice messenger, allows mobile device users to share a group call with up to 25 people.

Many Chinese companies also made the list. Baidu, which has earned reputation as Google of China, ranked No.2. But the real reason Baidu was ranked high is that China's biggest search engine is currently making a voice recognition system that can easily understand natural language, and is making efforts to employ self-driving car engineers massively to lead the business. Huawei ranked 10th for its overwhelming number of smartphones sold: 27.5 million smartphones in the first quarter this year.

Tencent, Didi Chuxing and Alibaba were also Chinese firms listed in top 50, ranking 20th, 21st and 24th, respectively.

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