Google Overtakes Apple As World's Most Valuable Brand
- by Emilio Sims
- in Money
- — Feb 2, 2017
Apple has been living on borrowed time for several years by exploiting its accumulated brand equity.
"New iterations of the iPhone have delivered diminishing returns and there are signs that the company has reached a saturation point for its brand".
Lego has replaced Disney as the most powerful brand in the world, according to the ranking. Apple remains in first place, with its brand value estimated to have grown 14 percent in the past year to almost Dollars 146 billion.
Lego's success followed licensing deals with Star Wars, Harry Potter and the Batman franchise, which would also reinforce the company's brand strength among both children and adults "for years to come", the report said.
The value of the Google brand rose by 26 percent in 2016, while Apple's fell by 27 percent, making Google the most valuable brand, and ending Apples five-year run at the top, according to Brand Finance. Google is "unchallenged" in its search business, the firm says, which is at the heart of its advertising income.
Sales from Amazon's first- and third-party sales, Amazon.com and Prime Now represented 43% of all revenue generated in the USA online market during 2016, according to the latest data from Slice Intelligence.
But analysts took a big bite out of Apple's meticulously constructed image.
But he warned Apple's evangelists are beginning to lose their faith, as "snaking queues of early adopters have shrunk nearly to the point of invisibility".
"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 can not demonstrate that genuinely innovative technologies desired by consumers are in the pipeline". "Gradually goodwill towards American brands has been eroded", he said. "We understand the importance of design, advertising and marketing, but we also believe that the ultimate and overriding goal of brands is to make money", he said.
"Unvalued brands can lead to undervalued companies that are more vulnerable to takeover, struggle to secure adequate financing and miss market opportunities", Mr. Haigh said. From 2009 to 2015 Woolworths was Australia's most valuable brand. The annual rankings are based on factors such as brand familiarity, loyalty, marketing investment, staff satisfaction, and corporate reputation. Interested to know who they are?