Fans, journalists and analysts always look forward to Brand Finance’s annual top 500 most valuable brands. Since 2012, the top spot has been held by Apple, famed for their iPhones, iPads and Macbooks. However, this year Brand Finance reported at 27% fall in brand value for Apple, paving the way for Google’s rise.
Apple’s fall in brand value has been attributed to perceived over-exploitation of the goodwill of customers, according to Brand Finance. This coupled with other companies catching up in terms of technology allowed it to be toppled from its perch. The author of the report further expanded upon the over-exploitation of goodwill by stating that “it has failed to generate significant revenues from newer products such as the Apple Watch and cannot demonstrate that genuinely innovative technologies desired by consumers are in the pipeline.” Apple’s brand value in 2017 is $107.141 billion, compared to its brand value in 2016 which was $145.918 billion.
Further weakening Apple’s ranking was the slew of Chinese smartphone brands in the market such as Huawei, OnePlus and Xiaomi who dish out great smartphones at relatively cheaper costs.
Google has meanwhile jumped ahead by a 24% rise in brand value from its 2016 estimate of $88.173 billion to a high of $109.470 billion in 2017. The last time Google held the title of the most valuable brand in the world was in 2011, a year before it was replaced by Apple. According to Brand Finance, Google’s major money maker was its search business and the related advertising income. Ad revenues were up by 20% in 2016, despite a fall in cost per click. Despite the ubiquity of mobile browsing, desktop advertising remains far more lucrative than its mobile counterpart.
Meanwhile, coming in third place was none other than Amazon who if projected to match the same growth rate will be the top most valuable brand in 2018. Amazon saw a growth spurt of 53%. This resulted in its brand value of $69.642 billion in 2016 to grow up to $106.369 billion in 2018. As is expected, the majority of its revenue comes from its retail service as the company plans to capture even larger swaths of the market. Despite failing to acquire Middle East-based Souq.com, the company has done well for itself.
You can read the full report here.
