Most Precious Mobile Operator Brands

And the winner is... China Mobile. Hard to guess, huh? Some research shows that the Chinese carrier's brand is worth $30.79bn. Vodafone and Verizon took the other spots on the podium. The top 10 is below (courtesy of the good folks at telecoms.com). And for some (by now a little outdated) comparison for how they rank amongst other industries, see here.

The study applies a royalty based on forecast of sales, brand strength (from qualitative panel data) which priced in market share, growth, price positioning, market scope, preference, awareness, relevance, heritage and perception. They complement these slightly fluffy markers with data on turnover, subs, churn, market share, ARPU, profitability, etc and then took the average score of the two to determine the royalty rate applicable. Apply tax and (low) discount rate and off you go. Pretty simple, isn't it? And, yes, I still think Cingular was cooler than AT&T... ;-)

China Mobile	China Mobile	China	Asia	30,793
2	Vodafone	Vodafone	UK	Europe	22,131
3	Verizon	Verizon Communications	US	North America	20,382
4	AT&T	AT&T	US	North America	18,886
5	T-Mobile	Deutsche Telekom	Germany	Europe	16,802
6	Orange	France Telecom	France	Europe	15,489
7	NTT DoCoMo	NTT DoCoMo	Japan	Asia	14,871
8	KDDI	KDDI Corp.	Japan	Asia	14,454
9	Movistar	Telefonica	Spain	Europe	10,799
10	Sprint	Sprint Nextel	US	North America	9,661