Apple once again tops list of most valuable brands

Apple’s 13-year run of quarterly revenue growth came to a crashing halt last month when the tech giant reported revenue of $50.6 billion, off 13% thanks to soft iPhone sales and a slowdown in China. The gloom-and-doom sentiment around the company has reached a zenith with THE STOCK off 30% from its all-time peak 12 months ago.

But Forbes’ annual study of the world’s most valuable brands shows that Apple is still in a class by itself with a value of $154.1 billion, 87% more than second-ranked Google. It is the sixth straight time Apple has finished first since Forbes began valuing the richest brands in 2010.

“Brands get their value from how customers perceive them,” says David Reibstein, a professor of marketing and branding expert at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “What makes it valuable from a company perspective is that customers are willing to pay a higher price or are more likely to buy.”

The Apple brand hits a home run on both fronts. Apple-philes will cry blasphemy, but Apple phones are not that distinct from the latest Samsung gadget, hence why the two companies are always suing each other. Yet, Apple commands a premium price and accounts for nearly half the smartphones sold in the U.S., along with 75 MILLION sold globally during the December holiday quarter.

Apple dominates in a consumer tech industry where brand matters. Revenue fell in the latest quarter, but the release of the iPhone 7 will certainly have fans of the brand lining up for hours outside stores in the fall ahead of the unveiling. The adulation helped the company generate $53 billion in net income last year.

“The chance to make a memory is the essence of brand marketing,” said a young Steve Jobs after co-founding Apple. The brand has done that by creating a connection with customers through music, phones and computing. It now wants to do the same in watches, TVs and payments with more categories, like autos, also on its radar.

No. 2 Google closed the gap on Apple this year with its brand value up 26% to $82.5 billion (Apple’s brand rose 6%). Google became a division of the newly formed Alphabet last year, but the search engine brand is still the company’s bread-and-butter profit center subsidizing “Other Bets” like self-driving cars, Google Fiber, Calico and Nest, which lost $3.6 billion last year.

People are much more likely to use Google than Bing even though the search results might not differ much because of the Google brand. Google has become the generic term for search, which is the ultimate in branding power. Reibstein is awed with how Google treats its logo, which he says is the “antithesis of what everybody teaches about branding.” Some companies employ brand police to track the use of their logos to ensure the proper fonts and colors. Not Google. It changes the logo on its homepage every day with a clever new doodle.

Rounding out the top five are Microsoft ($75.2 billion), Coca-Cola ($58.5 billion) and Facebook ($52.6 billion).