Brand champ: Microsoft-Nokia bests Google-Motorola

Byron Acohido | USA TODAY

Microsoft will pay $7.2 billion for Nokia. In 2011, Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility.

So who got the better buy?

Advantage Microsoft. At least that's what this chart from branding consultancy Kontera purports to show.

Kontera cross correlates content that consumers view online, analyzing roughly 2 billion content items daily, says Ammiel Kamon, Kontera's executive vice president of marketing and activation products.

This review news articles, social posts, videos and images. Kontera keeps track of how many times one particular brand or product is seen as compared to other products.

This provides "a key marketing predictor within the set of brands of which products consumers are most inclined to consider and ultimately buy," says Kamon. "In a nutshell, Nokia is a significantly stronger global brand. It has tremendous recognition value, and that brand strength is a spark that can translate into sales and market share, given strong products and distribution channels."

Google's engineers can argue all day long that Android is a much superior OS to Windows Phone. But that matters little in the branding world, says Kamon. "Having control of the physical device and a direct connection to the consumer can not be underestimated," he says. "Ownership of the device is key to creating a superb consumer experience and it is also key to control of the distribution channels."

Maybe Google should buy Samsung. "Consumers' awareness and consideration for Microsoft's smartphone offerings are much lower than Apple and Google, so this is a game changer for their go to market strategy," Kamon opines. "It will be very interesting to see how the Google-Samsung relationship fares in the next 12 to 18 months."