July 30: Global technology major Apple tops the Forbes list of the ‘World’s Most Valuable Brands’, ahead of giants Microsoft and Coca Cola. The Forbes Top 50 list of the world’s most valuable brands, compiled by the magazine, is dominated by 32 US firms. The top nine brands in the list were from the US. No Indian company features in the list.
Tech major Apple, which topped the list, “is a company that has faced setbacks before and bounced back to become the world’s most valuable brand — worth $ 57.4 billion,” Forbes noted. The magazine further said, “Apple shows just how a brand can survive and thrive even when a parent company stumbles. Apple’s sales in the late 1990s plummeted 46 per cent over a four-year stretch while the company lost money seven times over eight quarters.”
Interestingly, tech brands accounted for 30 per cent of the top 50 brands, occupying four of the first five places in the Forbes rankings. Financial services and food and beverage firms captured six spots each. Tech major Apple, which topped the list, is followed by software major Microsoft, with a brand value of $ 56.6 billion.
Beverage firm Coca Cola was third, with a brand value of $55.4 billion, followed by technology giant IBM, now worth $43 billion and search titan Google, which came fifth in the ranking with a brand value of $39.7 billion.
Other companies featuring in the top 10 include US-based McDonald’s, General Electric, Marlboro and Intel and Finnish handset maker Nokia at the tenth spot. “The brands on our list fared a little better, with sales, on average, flat in 2009. Some brands were hit hard by the economic downturn as well as their own missteps,” Forbes said.
Among the other top 50 brands are Toyota (11), Vodafone (13), Pepsi (24), Nescafe (29), Frito-Lay (38), ESPN (48) and Gucci (50).