“Apple has been rated the 20th best global brand across a variety of industries according to this year’s Interbrand report,” MacNN reports. “The company’s change in value increased by 12 percent — creating a brand value of approximately $15.4 billion — and climbed from the 24th position to its current spot.”
“The annual report evaluates companies from all countries based on various criteria, such as publicly available financial data, positive economic value, and the brand’s ability to withhold at least one-third of revenues outside its country-of-origin,” MacNN reports. “These criteria exclude some brands including Wal-Mart due to the fact that the company does not do business under the same name in all international markets.”
MacNN reports, “Other computer-related brands such as Microsoft, Intel and Dell saw a decline in brand value of 4 percent, 2 percent, and 12 percent, respectively.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
But for RIM, the news was great, and leading the market.
from the Interbrand report:
BlackBerry
RIM continues to lead the U.S. smartphone market with the
BlackBerry brand. It is first in smartphones globally with around 16 million subscribers worldwide–double from the previous year.
Overall, BlackBerry must continue to innovate and push its product line to compete with Apple from a brand standpoint. BlackBerry has made a more compelling case in the past year, and has likely elevated the role that brand plays. BlackBerry continues to be the business phone of choice.
Meanwhile, almost half the children of the world don’t have enough to eat and their parents will never earn decent revenues to feed them (and themselves), much less afford a MacBook… I think these “brand rankings” and other “Fortune 500” lists are an insult to human solidarity. Sometimes (I recognize that I don’t think about that every day) I fell bad knowing my Macs, my Nikes and the rest are all made by near-slave labour.
@Gilles:
I recognize that manufacturing conditions may vary widely depending on the company and product, but I can say fairly confidently that the good folks assembling your Mac (at least if it’s a laptop) are much better off than many other factory workers.
As part of an engineering study-abroad program to China, I got to tour one of the facilities outside of Shanghai, China where Quanta (the world’s largest laptop manufacturer) assembles many of the world’s laptops. The building we went through was assembling HP Pavilions that day. I doubt the work is very thrilling or fulfilling, but it was a very clean, orderly, and focused environment. Environmentally controlled, too, obviously. The workers are paid well by Chinese standards and live in company dorms, with access to recreational facilities.
Again, I can’t say the same for Nike or any other company or facility I haven’t seen, but when it comes to laptops, I think we can feel fairly at peace.
@ Lone Ranger
You’re right, working conditions are not always and everywhere bad in third-world factories. I guess I wanted to say that I’d prefer my Mac and Nike and etc. be made locally. International trade would be more fair and everybody would be better off if high-tech factories were to exist in every country of the world. Then all countries could trade on a level playing field.
I would like an international convention on wages, thus everybody doing comparable work would get comparable pay. I’m dreaming, of course.
@Giles – for that to happen, you also need to have a comparable cost / standard of living. In other words the cost of food, housing, medicine, etc. should be nearly the same for the same item across the world. Only then are you comparing Apples to Apples and have the basis for comparable pay. Note, I’m not saying you have a bad idea, just an incomplete one.
@ Lurker PC
Yes, we need to implement acceptable — I don’t mean identical, as climate, costs, way of life, values, etc. are not identical — standards of living everywhere on our home planet. I hate to see children earning a living out of discarded electronics dumps or salt mines or dismantling old cargo ships in South America or Pakistan or China, for instance.