Last month WIPO issued its annual report on PCT applications. The top three PCT filers in 2015 were all telecommunication companies.
1. Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.: 3,898
2. Qualcomm, Inc.: 2,442
3. ZTE Corp.: 2,155
See Annex 2, here.
Is there any wisdom in these rankings, you might ask yourself. First of all, it is about applications and not about granted patents. Second even if it were about granted patents, the quality of many a patent are bad. However, one could argue that it is an indication of innovation, although this indication might be skewed.