It may seem like an easy question to answer, but determining what the largest pharmaceutical company in the world is can be trickier than it looks. The definition of what a "pharmaceutical company" actually is has been changing in the past few years. Some companies, such as Pfizer (PFE -0.06%) and AbbVie, focus on developing and selling branded drugs, while others, such as Johnson & Johnson (JNJ 0.74%) and Merck, have a different strategy and are much more diversified.
So what is a pharmaceutical company, and which one is the largest in the world today? Health-care analyst Max Macaluso weighs in on this debate in the following video.
Editor's note: Pfizer lost patent protection for Lipitor in 2011. The Fool regrets the error.
