Apple is the most valuable brand of 2017 and has been there for seven years now. The company’s success engine is firing fabulously in all cylinders and the Cupertino-based company continues to bag in gigantic profits.
Apple’s brand (goodwill) is valued at $170 billion representing 10 percent growth from last year’s Forbes estimates of $154.1 billion. With so much popularity, Apple can afford to spend less in advertising; the company spent lesser in advertising ($1.8 billion) than the other top 10 rival brands.
All this put together has helped to frenzy the release of the bezel-free iPhone 8 in September 2017.The Google brand continued its unabated upward course and soared to position two dislodging Microsoft in the process. Google and Microsoft brands are worthy $101.8 and $87 billion respectively.
Google grew by 23 percent while Microsoft registered only 16 percent growth. Valued at $73.6 billion, Facebook brand raced to position four previously occupied by erstwhile all-the-time world’s most popular brand, Coca-Cola. The Facebook brand grew by an impressive 40 percent rate; a few notches short of Amazon’s 54 percent enviable progression. With that much, Amazon gate-crashed into the top 10 category for the first time ever.
This year’s Forbes brand rating has melodised the hymn that this is a Facebook era; out of the top 10 brands, 60 percent are tech companies. We are past the Mercedes and BMW era, we have been thrust into a digital revolution by the smartphone, digital books and social media. Samsung’s launch of the dazzling Galaxy S8 was not enough to upset the tables. At the back of the consumers’ minds, the Note 7 battery fiasco still ranked high.
Samsung brand only grew by six percent, enough to retain its corner in 10 most world’s upbeat brand residential location. In another related development, it has been revealed that Apple iPhone users suffer from “blind” brand loyalty. Apple’s success trends with iPod, iPad and iPhone has cast a spell on its customers; 92 percent of the lot stay glued to the Apple ecosystem.
According to Morgan Stanley’s Alpha Wise Survey, Apple’s customer loyalty is some love potion an African wife would desire to forcibly superglue a philandering hubby to the home bed. According to the same survey, Samsung’s brand loyalty stands at 77 percent.
And one more thing, Apple’s cash reserves surpassed $250 billion. Let me colour that; Apple has enough to pay for nearly half of Microsoft’s shares in an all-cash deal. And this is going to make Apple’s trustworthy customers very happy; the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) hacked Samsung Galaxy’s much-talked-about face-recognition miracle. The technology works on the premise that your irises are unique to you and are virtually impossible to replicate. The first part may be true but not the second.
All you need is a camera with night vision to snap your eyes and send the photo to a preferably a Samsung printer. Use the printout to unlock the phone. What does that do? Push iPhone 7’s brand loyalty further up the peak of glory. I rest my case.
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