100 Most Valuable Brands: Apple Tops Again; Nokia Disappears

WPP’s Millward Brown published its annual BrandZ study, ranking the world’s leading brands, which are increasingly technology companies. According to the research house, four of the top five global brands and seven of the Top 10 are tech firms.

At $183 billion, Apple is the world’s most valuable brand, a title it claimed last year as well, though at that time the brand was worth $153.3 billion. In the ensuing year, it has grown another 19 percent. IBM ranked second with $116 billion in value. Google, which ranked second last year, this year swapped places with IBM, after its brand value slipped 3 percent year over year. With a $76.7 billion brand, Microsoft claimed fifth place, ranking below McDonalds — the only non-tech company in the top five.

The biggest year-over-year gain also went to a tech company: Facebook, which rose from No. 35 in 2011 to No. 19 in 2012. A meteoric rise, and one that spiked the company’s brand value 74 percent to $33.2 billion.

Nokia, which ranked 81st in brand value in Millward Brown’s 2011 study after a 28 percent year-over-year decline in value, fell even further in 2012. So far, in fact, that it seems to have fallen right off the chart. Not a surprise, really, given the company’s current situation. But worth noting just the same; as recently as 2008, Nokia was the world’s ninth most valuable brand.