Apple Most Valuble Company: Is Amazon Next in Line?

Apple made headlines Tuesday by passing Exxon Mobil to become the world's most valuable company in market capitalization, making a dramatic turnaround from being nearly broke years before. Now it's time to ask what company might be next in line to make a similar transformation.

At the moment, all indications point to Amazon, the company that began as an online bookseller but now is directly challenging Apple with its new Kindle Cloud Reader that bypasses Apple's App Store by offering books and other down-loadable content through the Web instead of a native iOS app.