The eighth annual Millward Brown Optimor BrandZ Top 100 ranking of the most valuable global brands still has Apple at the top, despite a slight drop in the total value of technology brands.

Apple’s brand value was calculated at $185 billion, just 1% up from 2012. Google retained second place but closed the gap slightly.

Vodafone has announced its results for the financial year that ended on 31st March 2013.

Revenue for the group was down 4.2% to £44.4 billion, while a drop in the value of the company’s Italian and Spanish businesses meant profits fell from over £7 billion last year to £673 million.

Mark Bridge writes:

Last year, the Google I/O developer conference gave us plenty of product announcements: Google Glass, the Nexus 7 tablet, the Nexus Q device and the Jelly Bean version of Android. This year’s announcements were less dramatic: a streaming music service, a Google-friendlier Galaxy S4 and some game development tools. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) Apple announced its 50 billionth app download in the middle of the event.

Telefónica Digital and Samsung Electronics have announced a global deal that’ll add direct mobile billing to the Samsung Hub and Samsung Apps services.

It means that Telefonica customers will be able to charge the price of apps and other content to their mobile phone bill.

EE has confirmed it’s the official technology and communications partner of the 2013 Glastonbury Festival, taking over from the role its Orange brand has performed in previous years.

The company says it’ll install a temporary 4G network for the festival as well as increasing capacity for 2G and 3G users.