Apple Edges Google as Top Brand
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Arabic media channel Al Jazeera has been voted the world's fifth most influential brand in a poll of branding professionals that gave the top slot to U.S. iPod and computer icon Apple.
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While Google makes pots of money selling advertising for other companies, it does very little advertising itself. Even without a bloated marketing budget, the brand is a household name.
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Arabic media channel Al Jazeera has been  voted the world's fifth most influential brand in a poll of  branding professionals that gave the top slot to U.S. iPod and  computer icon Apple.
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Recent data published by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) shows Apple leading the consumer computer industry with the the highest customer satisfaction.
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The Nasdaq was the frontrunner thanks to strong earnings and upgrades for Apple and Google.
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Shares of Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL.O) rose to an almost four-year high on Thursday ahead of the launch of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (HPQ.N) version of the iPod digital music player and Apple's revamped iMac computer.
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Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox said that he is somewhat surprised Google is pursuing a search utility for the Mac. &quot;The search utility within a Mac OS X is already quite good,&quot; Wilcox said.
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By Trevor Datson LONDON  - Arabic media channel Al Jazeera has beenvoted the world's fifth most influential brand in a poll ofbranding professionals that gave the top slot to U.S. iPod andcomputer icon Apple.
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(InfoWorld) - Google will do better in China, but don't look for the company to dominate the market anytime soon, the company's top executive said Thursday. "Although it does not appear we are number one in the market, it looks like we are now in a situation where we are quite competitive," Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and CEO, told investors during a conference call. Google hasÂ invested heavily in China,Â setting up R&D centersÂ and developing aÂ search engine that censorsÂ results that government officials aren't likely to approve of. But despite Google's best efforts and the hiring of former Microsoft executiveÂ Kai-fu LeeÂ to lead its Chinese operations, the company trails far behind local rival Baidu.com. Google is the sixth most-visited Web site in China, with 4.4 percent of respondents choosing the search engine as the site they visit most often, according to an IDC survey released earlier this year. By comparison, Baidu ranked third, with 11.2 percent of respondents saying they visit the Chinese search engine more than any other site. Baidu also has a strong lead over Google in China's online advertising market, with a 16.5 percent share of the market in 2006, IDC said. Baidu earned US$105.2 million from online ads in 2006, making it the number two player in the market behind Sina, which runs China's top Internet portal. Google China ranked sixth in the country's online advertising market, with revenue of $38.7 million and a 6.1 percent share of the market, IDC said. Despite trailing behind its main rival, Google is upbeat about its prospects in China. Speaking to investors on Thursday, Google CFO George Reyes said the company's growth rate in China was "healthy." Schmidt said Google has a strong team in China and offers Chinese search capabilities that match or exceed those from rivals. "It's a very good start and although we don't think that this will result in an immediate huge success, we think that the tenacity of Google ... will bring significant victories in China over the next few years," he said.
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Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, sold shares at $85 each in its initial public offering, the bottom of the range the company had suggested the stock would fetch in the biggest auction-style IPO.
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LOS ANGELES  - It's back to the Mac this week. During a record-setting 2007, Apple (AAPL) rewrote its history with the success of the iPhone and continuing strong sales of the iPod line. This week, the company is expected to turn the focus to its roots: computers.
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Beat all Windows Mobile devices combined in US Apple squeezed itself into third place in the list of world smartphone makers during Q4 2007, pushing ahead of Motorola and Palm and all the Windows Mobile device suppliers.â¦
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InfoWorld - Google beat Wall Street&#39;s expectations for its fourth quarter, ended Dec. 31, 2006, as the company continues on a tear, selling search engine advertising much faster than its biggest rivals and than the industry average.
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By Michael LiedtkeSAN FRANCISCO, Associated Press  INTERNET search leader Google Inc.
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Mac resurgence? Apple was the US' third biggest retail laptop vendor in June, market watcher NPD has revealed. The Mac maker is behind only HP and Toshiba, but ahead of Dell, Gateway and Lenovo.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Apple's share of the laptop market is growing -- the company now sells more than one in every six laptops purchased in the United States, a research firm said today. "Apple's definitely up," said Stephen Baker, an analyst at Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD Group. "Their sales are continuing to grow faster than the rest of the marketplace." NPD, which collects its data primarily from retail sources and excludes most online and all direct sales, said Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops accounted for 17.6 percent of June's unit sales, an uptick of more than 3 percentage points from May's 14.3 percent. Baker attributed the jump in market share to refreshes that both laptop lines recently received. The lower-priced MacBook was updated in mid-May with faster processors and more memory, while 15-inch models of the high-end MacBook Pro were outfitted with new backlit LED screens in early June. The market share increase pushed Apple past Gateway into third place on NPD's list of laptop sales leaders, behind Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba. Research firm IDC also has Apple in the third spot; data it released last month put Apple's share of U.S. sales at 5.6 percent, far behind leaders HP (28.4 percent) and Dell (23.6 percent) but tied with Gateway. Back-to-school sales during this month and next, Baker said, should be strong for Apple, but his forecast is that the company's share will remain stable through the quarter. "I don't expect it to improve any from the June numbers," said Baker. The next move by Apple, said Baker, will likely not be in its computer business -- it refreshed the iMac family earlier this month -- but on the iPod side. "I'll stay firmly in the path of conventional wisdom and say that it's iPods next," Baker said. "They haven't been refreshed in almost a year." Although bloggers and Apple-centric Web sites have been touting rumors of iPod announcements coming as soon as next Tuesday, Baker didn't have any inside information on possible release dates or even details. However, he did have some predictions. "Apple will up the capacity of the Shuffle," he said. The diminutive player, which sells for $79, currently maxes out at 1GB. "And Apple has to decide where they want to go with the Nano. It's a music player now, so the question is what can they do if they want to keep it in that form factor?" Some reports have surfaced with photos showing a shorter, wider Nano, with a screen better suited to video. At least one such posting has pulled the photos at Apple's request, fueling speculation that the images were legitimate. "I think we'll also see a whole revamp of the iPod video line," added Baker, citing talk of an iPod with the same size and shape -- including screen size -- as the iPhone as one possibility.
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Appleâs earnings leapt ahead of analystsâ expectations on record Macintosh sales, showing the company is joining the league of dominant computer makers, Hewlett-Packard and Dell.