Google, Microsoft and Apple, some of the highest-rated brands in the world

31st March, 2011 by adina
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Brand Directory has published its rankings for 2011, listing the most valuable brands on earth. Technology and US-based companies dominate this list, with Google and Microsoft taking the two top spots. IBM is on fourth place and Vodafone is following very close on fifth. Apple on eighth and AT&T are filling out the top ten. Although other firms outranked it by brand, Apple had the most significant evolution, entering the top ten in 2011, after a twentieth place last year. It added $10 billion to its brand value, which is the highest of all companies present in the top ten. Its market capitalization value is significantly higher than any other company in the top ten has, excepting the conglomerate General Electric.

The top spot was taken by Google from the last year’s laureate Wal-Mart, which is now third, after losing $5 billion of its brand value as well as $35 billion of the market capitalization. Google has improved its brand value by adding $8 billion, but has lost over $14 billion of its market capitalization value. This situation nay change over this year, since the economy is improving and its mobile Android operating system as well as other ventures is still growing and improving.

Microsoft also rose from the fifth position last year to the second in 2011, a part of this success being attributed to its Kinect accessory. It also lost $35 billion in market capitalization since last year. Verizon did not qualify into the top ten, as it was only twelfth, but its success in 2010, marked by the adoption of the CDMA iPhone 4, helped it have one of the most important increases in market capitalization, practically doubling the old $196 billion value to $381 billion.

General Electric remains the most valuable company in the world, in spite of losing a quite remarkable $53 billion of its market value, but being still highest-rated in market capitalization by a huge margin, at $475 billion. Other two spots in the top ten were attributed to two banks, Bank of America in sixth position and Wells Fargo in ninth.

Nine of the top ten companies are US-based, the unique exception being Vodafone, which is based in the United Kingdom. Only four of them succeeded to improve their brand rating, namely IBM, Vodafone, Apple and Wells Fargo. Samsung and Intel, Apple’s partners, were ranked on 18th and 27th position, respectively and both saw their brand and value improve over the year, while Wal-Mart, General Electric and Hewlett Packard were dramatically hit in their overall value.

Companies involved in technology wars had surprising evolutions, sometimes turning up low on the list. The most notable example is that of Research in Motion, ranked 231st this year, after being 204th in 2010, as well as Dell, placed on 77th spot. Dell was once the brand leader of PC makers, but now has a market capitalization value less than 1/20th of its rival Apple. BrandDirectory broke out Xbox as a separate brand of Microsoft and ranked it 207th. Its market capitalization value was $16.4 billion versus the last year’s estimation of $30 billion.

The major technology company ranked lowest on the list was Adobe, which entered the top 500 at number 437. Its brand value is $2.5 billion, while the market capitalization value is $13 billion.


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