[pron]

I would like to suggest a simple litmus test that lends a similar, though slightly different, definition of a technology company:

If one or more people at your company need to constantly read recent scientific research papers in one or more fields of one or more of the hard sciences in order to build a critical and central component of one or more of your central products then you're a technology company.

The only difference this will have with the OP's definition is that even if you decide not to license your applied science to others but merely sell an application, you're still a technology company. E.g. if you actually read physics papers in order to come up with a novel microwave emitter, you're still a technology company even if you've decided to just sell microwave ovens.

OTOH, if all you need to develop your product is news about the latest web framework, or even a blog post explaining some nice sorting algorithm - you're an applications company.