Top 10 Technology Brands of The World

The global economic crisis may have hammered the IT companies' marketcap, but their brand power remains intact. Unlike the finance and auto industry giants, the other two severely affected industry verticals, technology companies continue to hold their sway in the world's biggest brands. The annual Brandz top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list has as many as five technology companies in the top 10.

The Brandz Top 100 is compiled by the consultancy Millward Brown Optimor, which combines balance sheet values with consumer sentiment. This year the brand value of the top 100 grew by 2 per cent to $1.95 tn.

Google

Topping the list is Internet search giant Google. The company is the world's first brand to cross the $100 billion mark beating other household names like Microsoft, Coca Cola and McDonalds.

Brandz writes, "The rising popularity of online search advertising, which is cheaper than display, is benefitting Google which owns 73 per cent marketshare in this area." The analysts of the Brandz found that the company's value of $101.4 billion puts it 25 per cent more valuable than computer software king Microsoft at $77.3 billion.

Google, started by Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997, went up 16 per cent in brand value in the past one year to just break the $100 billion mark.

Since its IPO in 2004, the company has continued to grow at a significant pace. Its acquisitions have played a key role in this, including multi-billion acquisitions of YouTube and DoubleClick.

MicroSoft

At no. 2 on the list is world's top software company Microsoft. The company's brand value touched $76,249 million in 2008-09, up 8 per cent up from last year. The company's Windows operating system runs on more than 90 per cent of the world's computers, which means it is used on nearly a billion machines worldwide.

Microsoft Office, which includes applications such as Word and Excel, also has captured around 90 per cent of the office software market.

In 2008, the software giant clocked in $60,420 million revenues, up 18.2 per cent from previous year. The company's profits amounted to $17,681 million, 25.7 per cent change from 2007. However, the year 2008 was a tough one for Microsoft, with the company's attempt to acquire rival Yahoo failing and search leader Google giving it a tough competition in Internet space as well as rolling out online apps to dent its software revenues. The software giant is now all set to release a near-final version of its latest operating system, Windows 7.

Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates, who retired from the company's day-to-day functions last June. The company has operations in more than 104 countries and employs nearly 80,000 people, 60 per cent of whom work in the United States.

IBM

Next biggest tech brand on the list is IBM. At No. 4 on the overall list, Big Blue's brand value stands at $66,622 million. The company witnessed a healthy rise of over 20 per cent over the last year's value.

More than 100-years old, US-based IBM is primarily a computer technology and consulting organisation. Headquartered in Armonk, USA, the company offers IT infrastructure and BPO services, such as strategic outsourcing, business transformation outsourcing, integrated technology and maintenance.

IBM has over 4 lakh employees worldwide. Founded in 1896 as the Tabulating Machine Company by Herman Hollerith in New York, IBM was incorporated in 1911. In 1950, IBM became the dominant vendor in the emerging computer industry with the release of the IBM 701 and other models of mainframe series.

Five key overseas growth markets for IBM include China, India, Brazil, Australia and South Korea -- with each contributing more than $1 billion in revenue annually. IBM made its second entry in India in 1992 after its exit in 1970s.

The Big Blue's profit climbed 18 per cent in 2008, fueled by overseas growth in countries from Argentina to Vietnam. The company made 15 acquisitions, up from 12 in 2007.

The challenging market may have hammered IBM's stock price by nearly 30 per cent since July 2008, however, analysts credit the company to have weathered the economic crunch `relatively well'.

Apple

Rising on the popularity of iPhone, iPods, and iMacs, US-headquartered Apple is at the 6th spot on the Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list.

The company has a brand value of $63,113 million, up 14 per cent from the last year. The king of consumer gadgets, Apple reported $32,479 million revenue in 2008, 35.3 per cent up from 2007. Bucking the global recessionary trend, IT giant Apple breached the $10 billion-mark in revenues in the quarter ended December 2008. The company recorded revenue and profit during its fiscal first quarter on the strength of laptop, iPod, and iPhone sales.

Despite fall in consumer spending, Apple continues to have its loyal customer base. Apple shipped 22.7 million iPods during its first quarter (up 3 per cent from last year), 2.5 million Macs (up 9 per cent), and 4.4 million iPhones.

Since company's iconic device iPhone hit the market in June 2007, there has been no looking back for Apple. The device got updated last year and has been introduced in 22 countries across the globe. The second-generation iPhone runs on 3G network and supports business email system.

China Mobile

China's largest mobile phone operator China Mobile or CMCC is at the 7st spot on the list. The company has a brand value of $61,283 million, up 7 per cent from the last year. Brandz writes, "Because of opportunities in rural areas without landlines where cellular operators provide the first extensive telephone service accounted for half of the China Mobile's growth." Founded in 2000, the company has a registered capital of 51.8 billion RMB yuan and assets of over 400 billion RMB yuan. It fully holds the equity of China Mobile (HK) Group Limited. The company not only provides basic mobile voice services but also value-added services such as data, IP telephone and multimedia. It also operates Internet services and the international gateways, reputed for its brands like GOTOne, Easy-own and M-Zone.

Vodafone

The world's largest mobile phone group by revenue, Vodafone is at the 9th spot on the Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list. The company has a $53,727 million brand value, up 45 per cent from last year.

Having acquired Indiaङs leading mobile operator, Hutch Essar, Vodafone launched an Indian branding campaign in 2008 called Happy to Help. The campaign addressed an issue faced by all category players - the need to create a brand relationship with the customer by focusing on service in a category susceptible to commoditization.

The company, which said last year that it was preparing to weather the recession by cutting थ्1 billion from its annual थ्22 billion operating costs, has been cutting staff. British telecom giant said it will continue to invest heavily in India.

Nokia

Ranked at no. 13 in the over all list, world's largest cellphone manufacturer, Nokia has a brand value of $35,163 million. The company's brand value saw a dip of almost 20 per cent over last year's. Last one year has been tough for the mobile giant whose portfolio includes products ranging from high-end to low-end cellphone models, Internet services and music store. Nokia, which made its first-ever quarterly pretax loss in January-March, is cutting annual costs at its key handset unit alone by more than 700 million euros ($911 million) to counter plunging demand. Nokia's financial results clearly reflect the weak demand for mobile phones amid the economic slump. Also evolving market for smartphones seems to be another reason for weak results. Nokia said it would reduce investment in creating new services, helping it to cut further jobs. During last year, Nokia has strengthened its focus on services. The company is turning from hardware to software and services. Several of the company's recent launches aim to direct users to its Internet services instead of Google's, or to its music stores instead of Apple's iTunes. Also, the company is fast shedding its conservative design appeal, and is turning its attention to clamshells, thin phones, and touchscreens. BlackBerry At No. 16 on the list is Research In Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry phones. The Canadian company saw a whopping 100 per cent jump in its brand value over last year. The company's brand is valued at $27,478 million. Brandz writes, "Its huge increase in brand value this year was due to its success in appealing to consumers as well as business users. The development of the BlackBerry Storm with its touchscreen was a key part of this strategy. Also, Barack Obama's demand to keep his BlackBerry in the White House reflects the high level of attachment that many people feel with this brand." RIM recently opened its online store -- BlackBerry App World -- offering applications for its popular BlackBerry smartphones. The store which is on lines of Apple's iTunes store offers a variety of free and paid applications ranging from games to music to news to weather to maps to social networking. Hewlett-Packard Next biggest tech brand on the list is Hewlett-Packard at no. 17. With a brand value of $26,745 million, the company saw 9 per cent dip in its brand value as compared to last year. In 2008, the company recorded revenues of $118,364 million up 13.5 per cent from previous year. The company's profits amounted to $8,329 million up from 14.7 per cent from the year 2007. HP's revenue and earnings rose 13 per cent and 15 per cent respectively, aided by strong demand for laptops (up 21 per cent) and services (10 per cent). Headquartered in California, the company serves more than one billion customers in more than 170 countries. The company spends $3.5 billion annually on research and development of products, solutions and new technologies. Eyeing the consumer space, HP is working on several touchscreen products, including notebooks that will use the finger-tapping interface popularised by iPhone. SAP Tenth biggest technology giant is German enterprise software company SAP. Ranked at no. 19th in top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list, the company's brand is valued at $23,615 million, up 9 per cent from last year. The company gets most of its sales from applications that run tasks such as payroll and human resources, one of the first areas to face cuts during a slowdown. The company declined to forecast revenue for 2009 and said that it would accelerate cost cuts to handle what it called a "challenging operating environment" this year. As a cost cutting measure the company, which sees tough conditions in 2009, plans to downsize its workforce. SAP, the world's biggest maker of business management software, said that 2008 operating profit rose 4 per cent to 2.84 billion euros ($3.75 billion) and total sales for the group gained 14 per cent to 8.46 billion euros. Source: Times of India