2008-12-10

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 And for some (by now a little outdated) comparison for how they rank amongst other industries, see here.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 MobileChina MobileChinaAsia30,793
2VodafoneVodafoneUKEurope22,131
3VerizonVerizon CommunicationsUSNorth America20,382
4AT&TAT&TUSNorth America18,886
5T-MobileDeutsche TelekomGermanyEurope16,802
6OrangeFrance TelecomFranceEurope15,489
7NTT DoCoMoNTT DoCoMoJapanAsia14,871
8KDDIKDDI Corp.JapanAsia14,454
9MovistarTelefonicaSpainEurope10,799
10SprintSprint NextelUSNorth America9,661