Apple Brand Value at $153 Billion Overtakes Google for Top Spot

[Bernard SG]

A bit surprised that this piece of news hasn't been posted/discussed yet on MR, so I thought I'd just make a thread:

Apple Inc. (AAPL), maker of the iPhone, iPad and iMac, overtook search-engine giant Google Inc. (GOOG) to become the world’s most valuable brand, WPP Plc said in a report today.

Apple’s brand value climbed 84 percent in the past year to $153.3 billion, WPP’s Millward Brown unit said. Google’s brand lost 2 percent to $111.5 billion, ending four years atop the rankings, while International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) climbed 17 percent to be the No. 3, ahead of McDonald’s Corp. (MCD)

New versions of the iPhone and iMac, and the introduction of the iPad tablet, helped Cupertino, California-based Apple almost double sales and profit for the latest quarter. Apple, which overtook Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), as the most-valuable technology company by market value in May 2010, boosted its share of the global phone market and is the leading seller of tablet computers.

“It’s clear that every single Apple employee, from Steve Jobs and Tim Cook to the summer interns, see protecting and nurturing that brand as a top priority,” Millward Brown Chief Executive Officer Eileen Campbell wrote in the report. “Tablet computing also drove value growth not just for Apple, but also for the providers who support yet another networked device.”

Facebook Inc., operator of the world’s largest social- networking site, had a 246 percent climb in brand value, the fastest, to become the No. 35 brand at $19.1 billion, according to the report. Baidu Inc., Google’s Chinese rival, posted the second-fastest climb at 141 percent, to be the No. 29 brand at $22.6 billion.

Twelve of the top 100 global brands were from China, led by China Mobile Ltd. (941) at No. 9 and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. at No. 11. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), which ranked 14th, overtook Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), which ranked 15th, to become the most-valuable retail brand.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Culpan in Taipei at tculpan1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net.

 

[*LTD*]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134 Safari/6533.18.5)

There is really no way Apple's achievement can be overstated. They singlehandedly, almost overnight, freed the "computer" from the box and keyboard. This was a landmark moment. Now everyone's pushing this paradigm. Tablets, slates, app stores, touch interfaces, etc.

The next 5-7 years will be a huge growth phase for Apple, during which we will witness the decline of Microsoft. Note how MS' brand now ranks below McDonalds. And McDonalds sells low grade cheeseburgers that pose serious health risks.

Welcome to the post-PC era, Microsoft. Seriously.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134 Safari/6533.18.5)

There is really no way Apple's achievement can be overstated. They singlehandedly, almost overnight, freed the "computer" from the box and keyboard. This was a landmark moment. Now everyone's pushing this paradigm. Tablets, slates, app stores, touch interfaces, etc.

The next 5-7 years will be a huge growth phase for Apple, during which we will witness the decline of Microsoft. Note how MS' brand now ranks below McDonalds. And McDonalds sells low grade cheeseburgers that pose serious health risks.

Welcome to the post-PC era, Microsoft. Seriously.

Yea, the whole world is now using an iPad instead of a computer.

 

[dejo]

Discussion continues in Front Page story thread: Apple Named World's Most Valuable Brand at $153 Billion