Brand Finance: Google overtakes Apple as the world’s most valuable brand

49 Comments

“Google enters 2017 as the world’s most valuable brand, knocking Apple off its perch for the first time in five years, according to this year’s Global 500 report from leading valuation consultancy Brand Finance,” Luke Stangel reports for Silicon Valley Business Journal.

“Google’s brand is now worth an estimated $109.4 billion, an improvement of 24 percent over its value last year,” Stangel reports. “Apple brand value dropped 27 percent — the single largest drop of any company last year — to $107.1 billion, Brand Finance estimates. The consultancy generally defines ‘brand value’ as the amount of money it would take to hypothetically license a brand name.”

“‘Apple has over-exploited the goodwill of its customers, 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,’ Brand Finance wrote. ‘Its brand has lost its luster and must now compete on an increasingly level playing field not just with traditional rival Samsung, but a slew of Chinese brands such as Huawei and OnePlus in the smartphone market, Apple’s key source of profitability,'” Stangel reports.

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Oh, so after all, it’s just a bunch of “valuation consultancy” hokum. Noted.

49 Comments

    2. It is nice to see you “predicting” rather than “declaring,” or “asserting.”

      However, I would be remiss in failing to point out that your predictions do not have a strong track record. In addition, this is a rather inane ‘brand value’ assessment.

      I could not find the full list, but Facebook was #9 at $61.9B, so Apple would have to fall pretty far. Interestingly, Intel was #59 at a bit over $20B. Load of rubbish.

      Reply

        5. You seem to have forgotten about the political reversal in the ’60s.
          Not all Republicans are deplorables, but we know where which party has most of the deplorables.

          Say hi to David Duke for me, he’s one of yours.
          Democrats at least pushed the equal rights movement, which turned the South red.

        8. Did you even read what you wrote?
          Southern Democrats (conservatives) wanted to block Ike’s reforms. (Ike was the last decent Republican I would have voted for). When Northern Democrats (Progressives, liberals) finally pushed through the Civil Rights Act, the Southern ones became Republicans.

          Now, don’t you have to get your hood dry cleaned?

  2. This had to come from CNN to try to poop AAPL’s big day…as always, a partial truth. 79 million iPhones in a saturated market, and Google gets the headlines. Typical media…and people will always be dumb enough to believe them and give them the ratings.

    Reply

  6. I don’t care what you use to evaluate the value – Google is worthless.

    It is one of those stock that it is good to own because if it goes up, you make money, and if it goes down, you’re even more happy. 🙂

    Reply

    1. I think this Brand value is more based on perception and Ad-associated value than what the company’s market cap is at.

      Speaking of market cap, congratz to AAPL for finally getting a jump to a level they hadn’t seen since Nov.2015. Still $65Billion to go though till they get back to what they were when they joined the DJIA.

      Reply

      1. At last, somebody who actually understands what this is about.

        Brand Finance is a valuation consultancy and they rank different brands according to their opinion of how much each brand might be worth if it were licensed as a brand name.

        It has nothing to do with market cap, which is a precisely measured valuation of that company. At the moment market caps are as follows – Alphabet ( GOOG ) = $551 billion, Apple ( AAPL ) = $677 billion.

        Reply

    1. Brand valuation certainly isn’t set in stone. They’re making too big a deal out of it. Any company in the top ten can usually go up or down a few spots in a year. I doubt Apple is very much concerned over losing that top spot. I think if For 2017, if Apple can come out with well-designed iPhone 8 and updates their Mac desktop line with some decent products, Apple will be back at the top spot again. Everyone was saying how much Apple sucked in 2016 for various reasons so Apple slid down a spot in branding valuation. That certainly isn’t going to destroy Apple and they’ll likely do better this year.

      Besides, what’s more important? Branding valuation or outright profits. I’d go with outright profits.

      Reply

      1. They certainly aren’t. But based on the difference between the #3 and 4 spots, the top 3 may just move amongst themselves the next time they do one. Apple certainly can raise their ranking by their actions this coming year, but Google and Amazon will also not be standing still. Amazon’s Alexa I think helped Amazon’s ranking greatly this past year with announcements of the Echo selling well and inclusion of Alexa in all kinds of products ranging from refrigerators to Ford autos at CES. Google was helped partly because Apple was perceived to be faltering this past year and a great increase in their Cloud related image.

        Brand ranking is more image related than profits, so as a company that considers image to be important to them, I would think Apple would be somewhat concerned.

        Reply

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