Apple Now the World's Most Valuable Brand, Knocks Off Coca-Cola

cagraham writes "According to consultancy firm Interbrand's latest 'Best Global Brands' report, Apple is now the world's most valuable brand, with an estimated worth of $98.4 billion. Since Interbrand began issuing the report in 2001, Coca-Cola has previously always claimed the top spot, but fell to third place this year, behind both Apple and Google. Tech companies now make up six of the top ten brands, but only 12 of the top 200. The report comes a week after Apple reported record sales numbers, moving 9 million iPhone 5s and 5Cs during their opening weekend."

Comments

Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[DontBlameCanada]

Giving Apple or really any "smart device" company any credit here is incorrect. Garmin,et al with the advent of their in-car GPS solutions made paper maps obsolete. Phones etc, didn't start replacing those devices until such a time as GPS chips became both cheap enough and power efficient enough to include in them.

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[i kan reed]

Giving apple credit for things they didn't do is pretty much the point of an apple fan.

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[interval1066]

That's what I'm talking about. The Mac-ites act like St. Steve cured cancer.

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[Anonymous Coward]

UnknowingFool said
That sounds like sour grapes to me. Apple is one of many companies that has helped change the world with their "electronic devices". Just ten years ago, the average person would have to look up directions at home, or consult a paper map, or stop and ask for directions if they got lost. These days they pull out their smart phone and do the same thing. Sometimes they don't even need to key in anything and just use voice commands.

Hmmm... at least you have the right username.

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[interval1066]

Woz created the consumer personal computer. and Jobs certainly gets credit for knowing better than the HP execs when they asked him what consumers needed computers for. After that, it all comes down to the "great artists steal" line. And Jobs was like a robber baron.

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[gstoddart]

There's many things that Apple might not have invented, but did nonetheless popularize.

I'm certainly not going to defend everything they've done as awesome -- but before the iPod came about, you probably couldn't explain to most people what an MP3 player was or why you'd want one.

And before the iPad came out, I doubt many people had ever even seen tablets because they were extremely specialized niche products. I know for a fact I'd never seen one, and you certainly couldn't walk into Best Buy and get one.

Apple hasn't made their money by inventing things in general, but in making a solid product with a really good user experience -- which in a few cases took the market by storm and established that there was widespread consumer demand. And I think that's what being valued here -- the brand recognition and awareness.

And in periodically having to work with stuff that has a terrible user experience, I wish more companies tried harder at that.

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[dimeglio]

Regardless of their matter of fact attitude toward Apple's influence, to change people's attitude towards technology takes a clear vision. Apple's was to make technology work the way people do. Products are just a consequence of that vision. I agree they didn't invent each single components in their products but they assemble them in such a way that it followed their vision. Then people bought them. What's lacking out there is not products or innovations it's delivering products which do not compromise the ultimate vision of a company (provided the vision is not just to make money).

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[cusco]

Apple's strongest point for the last two decades has been a marketing staff second to none in the world. They've managed to convince millions of people that their proprietary GUI was somehow the best "user experience" possible on all platforms and that their hardware was somehow superior to any other premium brand, while at the same time proclaiming that limiting customers' choices to only those that would make the company money was exactly what consumers wanted. If Edward Bernays were still alive he would work for Apple.

The biggest mistake the NSA has made in their current debacle is not hiring the Apple marketing staff. People would be begging the agency to spy on them.

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[Solandri]

I'm certainly not going to defend everything they've done as awesome -- but before the iPod came about, you probably couldn't explain to most people what an MP3 player was or why you'd want one.

Everyone who used Napster and had MP3s on their computer knew what an MP3 player was. What held back early MP3 players was the inability to easily sync your music collection and playlists on your PC to the MP3 player. All the other MP3 players were competing on features. Apple correctly surmised that how you used it was equally if not more important than what you could use it for. The first iPod was non-competitive in terms of features ("No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."). But by incorporating it with iTunes they "solved" the sync problem, and turned the MP3 player into a device the 95% of people who aren't tech geeks could use. And that's when MP3 player sales took off.

And before the iPad came out, I doubt many people had ever even seen tablets because they were extremely specialized niche products. I know for a fact I'd never seen one, and you certainly couldn't walk into Best Buy and get one.

Actually you could. I bought and set up a Thinkpad X60 tablet for a client who'd seen one and wanted to use it as a portable monitor and data entry computer around his veterinary clinc. It was 3.5 lbs, about an inch thick, and could take both pen and finger input. It was bulky by modern tablet standards, but still very usable in the intended application. The client was very happy with it, and it led to me getting a tablet PC as well.

The catch was it cost $2500. Microsoft and Intel knew from the early 2000s that there was a tablet market. But Microsoft being heavily vested in Windows and Intel being heavily vested in high-end CPUs, they tried to shape the tablet market in their image - one where tablets ran Windows and used high-end CPUs. Consequently they were ridiculously expensive (which was kinda the whole point - more profit for Microsoft and Intel). You saw a similar thing when netbooks showed up. Microsoft/Intel panicked at people buying these cheap computers which didn't use Windows nor Intel CPUs. In response Microsoft came out with Windows Starter, and Intel came out with Atom CPUs, and successfully brought the netbook market back into their fold.

The problem is, when the market is demanding a low-price tablet, and you are working your ass off to prevent a low-priced tablet from entering the market, that pent-up demand creates a huge opportunity. Which is what Apple tapped into with the iPad. It wasn't that there was this huge untapped market nobody knew about that Apple was smart enough to see. It was that Microsoft and Intel had been actively steering manufacturers away from that direction for a decade. Apple (which was no stranger to non-Microsoft OSes and non-Intel CPUs) wasn't as easily dissuaded and put out a (relatively) cheap tablet which didn't rely on Microsoft or Intel. If the iPad hadn't been released, Archos probably would've stumbled into the same tablet market. They made a Linux-based portable hard drive with a screen and touch interface for storage, but the screen kept getting bigger, and they kept adding more apps to increase its functionality.

Re:Obligatory Steve Jobs quote

[dugancent]

Or some people just like their stuff, marketing or not. I like the build of the notebooks. Why? Strong hinges, metal body, solid keyboard. It doesn't take a marketing department to convince me, just a few mins with the device.

Re: Stock trending down

[the computer guy nex]

Stock is trending down due to concerns over margins. Nothing to do with brand perception.

They might the most valuable, but they still suck

[smooth wombat]

Having had to go through the process of creating Apple IDs and using false information*, not to mention the harassment Apple foists upon people who use their phones, and now finding they've automatically shoved out iOS 7 on new phones with no way to downgrade**, all I can say is their user experience just plain sucks.

If you wanted people to choose a title and phone number, why wait until they're installing an app to prevent them from continuing until they provide the information?

If they wanted people to choose 3 security questions, why wait until you're installing an app and not let them bypass that requirement? It's not their phone, it's the end user.

Linus' quote keeps coming back to be more and more true: You don't break userspace.

By their ineptness, Apple has officially become the new Microsoft.

* Have to use false information because these are for corporate use and apparently the 'geniuses' at Apple can't figure out a way to allow for corporate information to be used so I have to input false information to create IDs.

** The security software we use has not yet been approved for iOS 7 and as of today it appears the new phones are shipping with the new OS with no way to go back to the good version.