Apple Overtakes Google as Most Valuable Global Brand

The sixth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands has ranked Apple as the world's most valuable brand for 2010. The brand increased in value by 84% to $153.3 billion and surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization.

Apple continued quietly developing a cloud and loudly discovered an empty space in the computing category that it filled with a new device – the iPad. In the last quarter of 2010, Apple sold more iPads than Mac computers. The iPad, which quickly met competition from other tablet makers like Samsung, helped Apple pass Dell and HP in total portable computer sales. An Apple cloud would further strengthen the brand as a trinity of platform, content and device.

At the same time, the smartphone category expanded with the introduction of iPhone 4 and many versions of Google's Android platform. Android became the best- selling smartphone platform over Apple and Symbian by Nokia. BlackBerry worked to sustain appeal among two high-messaging groups: business people and teens.

Google slipped to second place in the rankings, followed by IBM, McDonalds, and Microsoft. You can read the entire study at the link below...

[via Franko]