Reply to Message

Headline misses the point

Fred Fredrickson 22nd Sep 2008

How are global brands ranked?

"This methodology evaluates brand value...on the basis of how much it is likely to earn for the company in the future. Interbrand uses a combination of analysts? projections, company financial documents, and its own qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a net present value of those earnings"

In other words, it is a measure of how much the brand name alone will earn its owner. Put another way, it's the difference between selling Windows Vista and NoName PC OS where the two products are identical, just the name is changed.

Given that Microsoft's revenue is 10 times that of Apple's, and it's PC OS monopoly, it's not hard to see that Microsoft's brand is worth a lot more than Apple's in pure monetary value.

So this isn't an "MS trumps Apple" story any more than it's an "IBM trumps MS" story. It is about which company is more reliant on its name to sell its product. I would think that being at the top is not necessarily a good thing.