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83 BrandZ Top 100 2011: SECTORS/COMMENTARYBrandZ Top 100 2011: SECTORS/COMMENTARY 84Apple continued quietly developing acloud and loudly discovered an emptyspace in the computing category that itfilled with a new device – the iPad. In thelast quarter of 2010, Apple sold moreiPads than Mac computers. The iPad,which quickly met competition from othertablet makers like Samsung, helpedApple pass Dell and HP in total portablecomputer sales. An Apple cloud wouldfurther strengthen the brand as a trinity ofplatform, content and device.At the same time, the smartphone category expandedwith the introduction of iPhone 4 and many versions ofGoogle’s Android platform. Android became the bestsellingsmartphone platform over Apple and Symbian byNokia. BlackBerry worked to sustain appeal among twohigh-messaging groups: business people and teens.The B2B brands also continued moving to the cloud.While the opportunities are great, so are the challenges.Privacy and confidentiality remain vulnerable, asWikiLeaks demonstrated. And the ability to managedatabases that respond to unpredictable change fallsmore in the province of Twitter and Facebook thanbrands like Oracle, SAP and Siemens, which arerenowned for structured databases. As applications andfiles move to clouds it potentially becomes less criticalto have Intel inside.In a strengthening economy, leading brands such asIBM, with its focused “Smarter Planet” strategy, benefitedfrom increased business and government spending ontechnology and consultation. The value of the IBM brandincreased 17 percent. Brands from fast-growing marketsalso became more of a global presence, includingTencent/QQ, China’s social network site, which appearedin the BrandZ Top 100 ranking for the first time, and theChinese search engine Baidu. Its 141 percent increasein brand value made it the fastest riser after Facebook.The brand value of India’s IT leader, Infosys, appreciatedsignificantly.TECHNOLOGYHIGHLIGHTSTelevision and the Internet becameincreasingly linked, and brands, notablySamsung, introduced 3D TV.Facebook and Twitter, cloud venues for thelatest content, became the water coolers forconversation about last night’s TV shows.Technology brands deepened their bondwith customers as activities like sharingphotos and music insinuated the brandsdeeply into personal lives.TECHNOLOGYIN 2011Stephen Yap, Group Director, TNSFacebook transcends social networking“Perhaps the most important trend we’ve seenover the last few months is the rise of Facebook.Transcending its roots as just a social network,a place where people send messages to andfrom their contact list, to become very much anaggregator of all kinds of communication andentertainment activities that people do on theircomputers and mobile devices. Whether it’splaying games, sharing photos, videos or chatting,Facebook is increasingly becoming the dominantplatform for all kinds of technology activities forconsumers across the world.”SPOTLIGHTThe emergence of cloud computing portendsheated competition over who will own theconsumer – device or platform. When thebattle was about winning the PC market,consumers were less concerned about theparticular brand of PC or laptop as long it ranMicrosoft Office. With the cloud, consumersmay care less about the brand of their mobiledevice as long as it can access Facebook.Apple could be an exception because of thestrong emotional and functional appeal ofthe brand.