For the past four years, the top place in the Brandz 100 list was held by Google, but this time they have been toppled over. Apple’s iPhone has been doing very well and is indeed very popular but this change in valuation is largely being attributed to the iPad.

Apple has increased its valuation by $137 billion or 859% since 2006, when the Brandz Top 100 list was first introduced. Since last year, Apple has increased its valuation by $153 billion or 84%.

Google has fallen to spot number 2 and has also lost 2% in terms of valuation, in spite of the fact that their Android OS is doing quite well.

Popular social network Facebook has also entered the top 100 list for the first time this year and is placed at number 35 with a valuation of $19.1 billion.

Amazon has shown the greatest rise in position from number 46 last year to 14 this year, with a valuation of $37.6 billion.

Technology based companies held 6 out of the top 10 spots in the list. These were Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, AT&T and China Mobile.

Among the losers in this year’s ranking were Nokia, which has fallen 38 places and is now ranked 81, and Nintendo, which has fallen 47 places and now ranks 79 in the list.

The Brandz index uses various parameters to judge the top 100 brands in the market. These include brand equity surveys and financial data from analyst reports. The future growth potential of the brand as well as the bond it has with users is taken into consideration.

Nokia, the handset manufacturing giant, has been going through a deepening crisis since the launch of the Apple iPhone in 2007. The company has decided to sideline their Symbian OS in favour of the Windows Phone OS for their smartphones.

Microsoft Windows Phone on a Nokia handset

Nokia will also use other Microsoft services such as the Bing search engine for their mobile phones. This could turn into a serious blow for Google Mobile and help Bing to gain a larger share in the mobile search market.

The move is expected to help Nokia fight the growing popularity of the Apple iPhone as well as the Google Android platform. Nokia’s new Chief Executive, Stephen Elop, worked with Microsoft until last September, when he took charge of Nokia. The relationship comes as no surprise, not only due to Elop’s historical associations with Microsoft, but also because of the fact that Google is seen as a competitor.

According to Elop, “Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward. Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path, aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership.” He also indicated that there would be a management reshuffle, and some people may also lose their jobs.

Though Nokia is still the largest handset manufacturer in the world, its market share has fallen from 36.4% to 28.9% in the last year.

Reactions to the announcement have been quite negative, and the price of Nokia shares has fallen 9.8% since the announcement. Even though this could be Microsoft’s biggest stroke of luck, with respect to mobile search, their shares didn’t rise much either.

Could this be both Microsoft and Nokia’s chance to strike the smartphone and mobile Web markets and make a serious change in both their fortunes?

The total number of smartphones that have been sold in the second quarter of 2010 is around 63 million. During the same time last year, the number was 41.9 million. Moreover, 118.3 million smartphones shipped in the first six months of 2010 is which is 54% higher than the 76.8 million phones that were sold during the first half of last year.

HTC and Samsung, both Google Android partners, showed a growth rate of 128.6% and 172.7% respectively.

Nokia is still the largest smartphone supplier with a 38.1% market share and is followed by Research In Motion (RIM)’ Blackberry, which holds 17.8% market share. Apple is in third position in the smartphone market, with 13.3%. HTC is next with 7.6% and Samsung has 4.8% share of the market.

Ramon Llamas of IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team says, “The worldwide smartphone market will continue this explosive growth in the second half of 2010, setting up a critical starting point for 2011.”

While Nokia and the Symbian OS are at the top of the market, Google’s Android OS is growing the fastest. In the second quarter of 2010, Android had a market share of 17% compared to just 1.8% in the same period last year. Android is now only one percentage point behind RIM.

In this fierce battle, the one company that has not fared well is Microsoft. They now have only 5% of the market share compared to 9.3% last year. They hope to be able to rectify this situation soon, with the launch of their new operating system.

According to this deal, Yahoo! and Nokia will work together to improve their mobile internet services, in an attempt to win back some of their market share from competitors like Google and Apple.

The agreement will become functional in the second half of this year, and more services may follow later. Yahoo! will host Ovi email on Nokia phones exclusively, while Nokia will provide maps and navigational services to Yahoo!

During a conference held in New York last week, Nokia and Yahoo! stressed on the need to improve and expand mobile services in new markets, as the mobile phone is fast replacing the PC.

Nokia’s Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo believes that this deal with Yahoo! will help Nokia to do better in the U.S. where it is still not doing well in spite of being the market leader in the newer markets.

He says, “Location, maps and navigation will get more mind-share, will get more attention in the U.S. and many more users in the North American market,”

While Nokia has spent over $10 billion in the last few years to offer services like music downloads email etc. they are still unable to compete with Apple and Google.

On the other hand it is a well known fact that Yahoo! has been struggling for a while now, to keep up with its rival Google which has the far more popular Android operating system.

Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz feels that this deal could eventually help Yahoo! to get more local advertising business.

Financial details of this deal are not yet available. There have been mixed responses from various analysts as to whether this deal is likely to be successful or not.

CNet reports that Skype and Nokia announced their partnership at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The software for Skype’s Internet calling service will now be integrated on some of Nokia’s high-end smart phones. The first model to have this facility will be the N97, which is slated for a June release. The Skype service, however, will only be started in the third quarter of the year.

Once the service is started it will be integrated into the address book and users will automatically be able to see which of their Skype contacts are online. They will also be able to use its instant messaging service. This facility will enable N97 users to make calls over the Internet irrespective of whether they are using a 3G cellular network or a Wi-Fi network. All Skype-to-Skype voice calls will be free, while Skype to landline or mobile calls will be at low rates.

Sony Ericsson also announced a deal with Skype. Sony will provide a Skype panel on the Windows Mobile Xperia1 handset.

While this is great news for consumers, especially those who need to make frequent international calls, mobile network operators are not likely to be thrilled with this development. Free and low cost international calls via Skype would mean lower revenue generation for their own networks.

It is not impossible that networks such as AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile may require the Skype service to be discontinued from handsets using their networks in the U.S.A. Three UK is one of the only major networks to have forged a relationship with Skype.
Skype’s chief operating Officer Scott Durchslag says that though they are starting this service with the high end phones, it will also be made available on mid-tier handsets in the future.

Search, which has already become an extremely important feature of mobile technology, is now set to combine itself with the mobile camera and GPS.

The working of this new service is quite simple really. All one needs to do, is to “point” his mobile camera at an object, and as soon as the mobile has “seen” the object, it will “find” all the internet links, connected to the object in question and display them on the mobile screen. The user then selects whichever link is most appropriate and clicks on it.

Nokia and its content and advertising partners are in the process of tagging all the images to form a database for this new service of theirs. The service will be offered sector by sector, as the database gets consolidated.

To start with, they will offer this service for the movie sector only. If a user points at a particular movie poster, the service will find and provide various links such as, where the film is running, show timings, reviews, trailer, ticket bookings etc.

The links shown will also depend on the current location of the mobile GPS, reports Peggy Albright at Msearchgroove.

This service will thus create interactivity, and according to Philipp Schloter, Nokia’s General Manager for Point & Find, it could turn into a money spinner, for brands and advertisers, who could thus connect with their target audience and encourage impulse buying.

Initially this service will be beta tested in the U.S. and U.K.

If things go as planned, Nokia would be the first company to launch this innovative service.

It will be a free service for users, and will be accessible initially, only to users of the N95. Later however, it may be extended to include all GPS enabled camera phones, irrespective of the brand.

At present they will have offices in London and Boston.

Vice President and Head of Mobile Advertising for Nokia, Mike Baker says, “We want to be a catalyst, in the mobile advertising ecosystem. It is seen as somewhat of a black art, practiced in a cottage-industry fashion.”

He further explains that with several mobile ad technologies now available, discussions about reach and measurement are no longer relevant, but rather it is creativity (or the lack of it) that is responsible for holding back the medium.

This move is expected to bring mobile advertising out of the shadows and into the main stream, and thus turn it into a full-fledged marketing medium.

This program will be aimed at integrating various mobile advertising formats, thus improving customer engagement. Through this programme advertisers will be able to plan and execute campaigns, with their target audience in mind, and they will also be able to measure their campaign’s effectiveness.

Several companies like Mobiqa, Mobile Acuity and uLocate have already signed up for this alliance. These companies are already providing facilities such as image recognition, digital coupons, mobile barcodes and location based targeting.

Through this program, it is hoped that advertisers will be able to optimise mobile advertising, as the mobile phone is a very versatile gadget and can influence customers in various ways through out the day, but at the same time it is not easy to run these campaigns due to the fragmentation in the industry.

Nokia’s efforts to streamline the industry and help advertisers reach their target audience have been appreciated by both advertisers and agencies.

T-Mobile + Yahoo!

T-Mobile’s deal with Google to provide search to their customers was one of the first of its kind when they launched their Web ‘n’ Walk service. Today that partnership has been terminated in favour of a new deal forged with Yahoo! Beginning in March, T-Mobile customers in 11 European countries will see Yahoo!’s mobile oneSearch by default on their phones.

Official press release: Yahoo! and T-Mobile Partnership

“T-Mobile’s decision to work with Yahoo! is a clear demonstration of the strength of our industry-leading mobile search service and our ability to work with partners to give consumers the best possible mobile Internet experience,” says Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo! Inc.

Nokia + Google

Nokia Search, the new facility powered by Google will be launched on Nokia’s N96, N78, Navigator 6210 and classic 6220 models in a few select countries. Eventually Nokia plans to make this service available in over 100 countries and it will run in 42 different languages.

Official press release: Google and Nokia team up on search

The Google search box is already available on Nokia Internet Tablets and Nokia also supports Google’s YouTube videos on their N95 8GB model. This latest deal between the two companies will enable written and oral search services with document and photo sharing facility through audio and video applications. It will also provide Internet navigation and online music. In other words, it will allow users to browse around, access maps, messages etc. through just a click on their mobile phones.

Google VP Vic Gundotra says, “Google search combined with the high quality applications on Nokia devices (will) help make information available to Nokia device users wherever they are and provide an excellent overall experience.”

Digging Deeper

On the surface this might seem like everyday business… winning some clients, and losing some to the competition. However, considering what’s at stake here, the ramifications are much, much deeper.

T-Mobile, like most UK operators considers Google to be a serious threat to their future revenue streams. All operators want a large slice of the mobile advertising pie. Google has played hard ball, and severed a few relationships along the way. T-Mobile’s decision to drop Google and partner with Yahoo! has likely little to do with Yahoo!’s superior mobile search product offering and more to do with a strategic move to decrease Google’s dominance in mobile.

Nokia has been debating about its mobile search strategy for a while now. They have considered launching their own search facility within their phones, partnering with Google, or using a white label mobile search provider. This announcement most likely indicates that in spite of the fact that the two companies are rivals in many ways (Nokia’s S60 software competes with Google’s Android platform), the world’s largest handset manufacturer has accepted the fact that they could never develop as good a search service as Google, and if they tried to compete with Google’s brand recognition in search, they would most likely lose.

Forging a relationship with Google allows Nokia to tap into the mobile search market rather than ending up being completely excluded from it.

In return, Google could potentially gain direct access to 40% of worldwide mobile users and 50% of the Smartphone users via their handsets.

This means that even the T-Mobile customers who would have otherwise no longer seen Google search, might once again see it in the near future on their Nokia phone itself without even having to access the operator portal. Nokia and Google’s deal could thereby cut off operators like T-Mobile and competitors like Yahoo! completely. Few tears are likely being shed at Google for the loss of the T-Mobile contract, in the face of this potentially huge new opportunity.

Navteq is a leading provider of comprehensive digital map information for automotive navigation systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions. NAVTEQ also owns Traffic.com, a web and interactive service that provides traffic information and content to consumers. The Chicago-based company was founded in 1985, generated 2006 revenues of $582 million and has approximately 3,000 employees located in 168 offices in 30 countries.

Experts think that $8.1 billion is far too high a price for Navteq, and this was reflected in the 2 percent fall in Nokia’s share prices in Helsinki following the announcement. However, rumour has it that Google was also interested in buying Navteq, which would have strengthened their position in the local search market, to Nokia’s disadvantage.

Navteq / Nokia Acquisition Press Release

Nokia’s acquisition signals how seriously they intend to fight for dominance of the mobile local search market. They are already the foremost handset manufacturer worldwide. This gives them the unique advantage of controlling the users’ access to the mobile Internet overall and mobile search in particular.

Update:

Jennifer Laycock at Search Engine Guide authored an article about how companies can capitalise on their competitors’ PR crises. In the article she mentions how Nokia’s opening up of the N-series phones is beautifully timed to conincide with Apple’s ongoing PR issue due to the iPhone being locked and Apple refusing customer service to any user who has unlocked their phone.