Apple News Flash: Apple Most Valuable Brand In The World; iPad Usage Share Rises Since July ‘14
- Staff
- November 7, 2014
According to the latest Forbes’ survey, Apple has seen off the likes of Google and Microsoft to be crowned the most valuable brand in the world. Companies are valued based on their earnings over the past three years and the relevance of the brands in their industry and must have some presence in the US, according to the report.
“A valuable brand delivers a return for the company on two dimensions,” says David Reibstein, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “Either it allows the company to charge a premium price or it adds more volume or market share.”
And Apple has been able to do just that according to the report:
[su_quote] When it comes to charging a premium price and moving product, no one does it better than Apple AAPL -0.16%. There are other phones and tablets that are functionally comparable or arguably better than the iPhone and iPad, but the Apple brand carries tremendous weight and credibility, and customers are willing to pay up for that. The company sold 39.3 million iPhones in its latest quarter and could sell as many as 60 million during the last three months of 2014 with the holiday selling season. Apple also moved 12.3 million iPads and 5.5 million Macs last quarter.
Add it all up and the Apple brand is worth $124.2 billion and almost twice as much as any other brand in Forbes’ annual study of the world’s most valuable brands. The value of the Apple brand is up 19% over last year. Apple’s strong brand and innovative products allowed it to redefine four industry categories over the past 13 years with the launches of the iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTunes. The next industries on Apple’s hit list are smarthwatches with the Watch and financial payments with Apple Pay. Premium pricing pushes up Apple’s operating profit margins to 33%, and the company generated $50 billion in free cash flow for the fiscal year ended in September.[/su_quote]
In other news, Chitika is reporting that iPad owners continue to use their iPad, while Amazon and Samsung tablets have seen a slight drop in usage over the same period:
[su_quote] Chitika is reporting that iPad users generated 79.9% of North American tablet-based Web traffic over the month of September 2014 – a from the 81% figure observed one year ago, but a gain of 1.9 percentage points since July 2014. Meanwhile, Amazon and Samsung tablets are, respectively, still the second- and third-largest sources of tablet Web usage in the U.S. and Canada after both posted slight quarter-over-quarter share drops over the study period.[/su_quote]
