Despite it being a rough couple of months for Sony and Nokia, work on the most recent Brand Asia report reveals that they’ve still got ‘Brand Power’.
The report, carried out by Nikkei BP Consulting, evaluated 60 of the world’s biggest brands in eight Asian countries in four different areas – “Outstanding”, “Innovative”, “Friendly” and “Convenient”. So it’s a pretty big deal for both brands to have done so well. Particularly when some of the brands they beat to the top spots were Apple, Disney, and Coca-Cola.
Nokia did the best of the two, ranking first in Indonesia, India and Vietnam, and coming second in Thailand. Which is rather surprising when you take a peek at it’s rapidly shrinking revenue – in Quarter 1 of 2012 revenue dropped almost a third year-on-year from €7billion to €4.2 billion. It’s smart phone sales have more than halved from 24.2 million to 11.2 million in just a few months, and it’s shipments of smartphones to China went from 23.9 million units in the first quarter of 2011 to just 9.2 million this year.
Sony may be slowly disappearing before our very eyes, but it’s still got the brand magic as it managed to appear in the top ten more often than any other brand in the survey. The survey said
Although the company continues to be a source of downbeat news – with a forecast a 520 billion yen net loss for the year to end-March 2012 and large-scale restructuring anticipated – in Asia Sony has a global brand asset to be proud of. Expectations will focus on measures to recover its operating performance and take advantage of this strong asset.
And finally, Apple did unsurprisingly well, coming first in China, Taiwan and Japan, and bringing home a second place in South Korea demoting Samsung into third place in its home market.
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