Apple usurps Google as world's most valuable brand

Apple has overtaken Google as the world's most valuable brand, ending a four-year reign by the Internet search leader, according to a new study by global brands agency Millward Brown. The iPhone and iPad maker's brand is now worth $153 billion, almost half Apple's market capitalisation, says the annual BrandZ study of the world's top 100 brands.
Apple's portfolio of coveted consumer goods propelled it past Microsoft to become the world's most valuable technology company last year. Peter Walshe, global brands director of Millward Brown, says Apple's meticulous attention to detail, along with an increasing presence of its gadgets in corporate environments, have allowed it to behave differently from other consumer-electronics makers.
"Apple is breaking the rules in terms of its pricing model," he told Reuters by telephone. "It's doing what luxury brands do, where the higher price the brand is, the more it seems to underpin and reinforce the desire." "Obviously, it has to be allied to great products and a great experience, and Apple has nurtured that."
By contrast, one of the brands most threatened by Apple's rising popularity in offices took a big hit in the survey. Research In Motion's BlackBerry brand lost a fifth of its brand value. Among technology companies, only Nokia's 28 percent decline was steeper. Of the top 10 brands in Monday's report, six were technology and telecoms companies: Google at number two, IBM at number three, Microsoft at number five, AT&T at number seven and China Mobile at number nine.