After three years at the top of the Millward Brown BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Brands chart, Apple has lost the number 1 position to Google.
Apple slipped to second place in 2014, whilst IBM remained in third. The rest of the top ten consisted of Microsoft, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Visa, AT&T, Marlbro and Amazon.
When it comes to the top 100 tech brands, Millward Brown’s report contrasted thriving service companies with product-focussed brands. It notes that Tencent, Facebook and Baidu saw the values of their brands rise by 97%, 68% and 46% respectively, yet Samsung’s brand value increased by 21%, HP’s by 19% and Sony’s dropped by 1%.
Twitter and LinkedIn were both new entrants to the BrandZ Top 100 and the Technology Top 20. Chinese internet brand Tencent was the year’s fastest climber.
Peter Walshe, Global BrandZ Director at Millward Brown, said “Digital service brands such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tencent and LinkedIn are now more than just tools, they have become part of our lives. They offer new forms of communication that absorb people’s attention and imagination, while also helping them organise the rest of their lives at the same time. To gain more of our mind-space brands such as Google are making ambitious plays across existing category boundaries.”
AT&T was the most valuable telecoms brand, followed by Verizon, China Mobile, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom.
The BrandZ study, which is commissioned by marketing communications group WPP, calculates the value of a company’s brand by combining the views of potential and current buyers with financial data.
[Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands report (pdf)]