The power of the IT and ICT industries is most visible once the big research firms release their branding strength reports. For the past couple of years, a lot of WPP companies sponsored the research and publication of BrandZ, the world's top 100 brands report.
Almost one third of top 100 is occupied by IT and ICT companies, with Top10 being very interesting: IT firms occupy the #1, #2, #4, #6, #7 and #9 spots.
When it comes to their overall value, the Top 10 brands are worth 664.48 Billion USD , out of which IT/ICT firms take up 421.03 billion, or around 63.3% of the total value.
The number one spot went to Google again, but this year marks a milestone for the company - Google is the first brand to pass the 100 billion USD mark, a 16% growth over 2008. Microsoft came in second place, with $76.25B of name value. Apple's growth in the world of phones wasn't followed by the significant growth in brand value - the company still grew by 14%, and firmed itself in sixth position. Apple would probably be in Top5 if McDonald's didn't score a 34% YoY increase.
Brandz largest jump came in a form of Research-In-Motion's Blackberry device. The brand was not present in 2008 Survey, but today it occupies 16th place, with a 100% growth. The total value of the BlackBerry brand is 27.48 billion.
The biggest losers in the IT world are Canon [-29%], Cisco [-25%] and Nokia [-20%], but they're small fish compared to the banking and retail sector: ING and Citi lost more than half of their brand value [-55% and -52%], Bank of America lost half of its brand value [-50%], while Home Depot dropped by -40%.
In case you're interested, you can view the complete PDF with all the results here: BrandZ Top100 Brands 2009. If you want to compare to previous years, you can see results for 2008 and 2007.
