The annual Millward Brown BrandZ survey was released recently, with Apple holding fast to its number one spot. Apple's brand worth for 2012 actually grew 19% since last year to $183 billion, followed by IBM with $116 billion brand worth, and Google which dropped a down a rank. It's worth noting that telecom and tech brands claimed about 44% of the top 100 chart's value, compared to a third in 2006. Among the carriers, AT&T still claimed a higher brand value than Verizon, but Verizon has a lot more forward momentum. The Brandz survey spanned over 380 categories, and was generated after over 65,000 different brand measurements in 41 countries.

It's not a huge surprise to see Apple's brand value so high, and one would expect the trend to continue well into next year. In fact, the effectiveness of Apple's branding has gotten to the point where competitors can't help but attack the cult-ish mindset in courts. Apple has created an iconic brand with no small help from their marketing efforts, retail locations, and not to mention world-class products. In fact, at this point it's hard to imagine many other companies being able to command the same clout among the masses as Apple has. Seriously, what could other manufacturers even do to  recreate the same kind of mystique as Apple without just looking like a copycat?

Brand value has real tangible returns, and isn't just an indicator of how good Apple is at marketing itself; UBS Research showed not long ago that iPhone users are overwhelmingly the most likely to stick with Apple for their next device out of every smartphone manufacturer. That's part and parcel of having a strong brand.

You can download the full BrandZ 2012 report here, which is actually really, really detailed. Included are a bunch of interesting editorials on marketing across a variety of industries and regional trends.

Source: Reuters

If you work for IBM, you are welcome to bring your iPhone 4S to work with you but forget about using Apple’s voice driven digital assistant, Siri. IBM has banned the use of Siri on all of its networks due to concerns over privacy. Siri works by sending anything you ask it to a data center in North Carolina; after that, no one really knows exactly what happens with that data once it has been dealt with. Is it deleted once it has been dealt with, is it stored temporarily or is it kept forever?

IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT’s Technology Review this week that her company has banned Siri outright because, according to the magazine, “The company worries that the spoken queries might be stored somewhere.” It turns out that Horan is right to worry. In fact, Apple’s iPhone Software License Agreement spells this out: “When you use Siri or Dictation, the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple in order to convert what you say into text,” Apple says. Siri collects a bunch of other information — names of people from your address book and other unspecified user data, all to help Siri do a better job.

Siri’s original lead developer Edward Wrenbeck confirms that privacy was always a big concern and the fact that Siri could provide information on your location alone could be enough to violate a non-disclosure agreement. Of course this in no different to many other apps currently available or in fact,  the internet in general.

Do you think IBM is right to be concerned over who can gain access to this information and do you have privacy concerns of your own while using Siri?

Source: Wired

Macworld is reporting that Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 will finally get IBM off of their current WebMail solution (see video above) and onto real support for real push email to the iPhone:

Early last year, Apple licensed ActiveSync so that businesses could push their corporate Exchange e-mail messages to iPhones. Since the ActiveSync client is already embedded in the iPhone, adding ActiveSync to the Traveler product was a good way to enable push Notes e-mail to the iPhone, [Ed Brill, director of end-user messaging and collaboration for IBM Lotus software] said.

Good on IBM.

We only have one question -- hey, Google, if they above is true and ActiveSync client is just sitting there waiting, where's our push Gmail?

(Apologies to IBM for the tangent).

The long-running dispute between Apple and IBM over Apple's hire of Mark Papermaster has come to a close, according to Apple PR:

Apple® today announced that Mark Papermaster will be coming to Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, on April 24. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod® and iPhone™ hardware engineering teams. The litigation between IBM and Mark Papermaster has been resolved

Papermaster will take the helm of iPhone and iPod hardware, replacing Tony Fadell (who was rumored to have pushed for Linux to be the basis for the iPhone).  Odd that he's going to have to wait until April 24th to take charge, but we suspect that won't slow things down too much on hardware development.  Got any advice for Papermaster?  Would you like to seem him shephard in that iPhone HD? Think he'll push for Quad-Core goodness?

Apple Insider is reporting (via CNet) that Apple has hired away Mark Papermaster, IBM's VP of Microprocessor Technology Development.

When Apple bought Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi), and reportedly signed licensing agreements with ARM and PowerVR, we kinda sorta suspected Steve Jobs was getting serious about spinning his own custom systems-on-a-chip for the iPhone and the greater iPod platform.

Hey, if they can switch from Intel integrated to Nvidia chipsets to support their Core 2 Duos on the Macbook line, they can certainly role their own mobile brains, right?

IBM is suing on the grounds of a no-compete clause, which has historically been worthless in California (which is likely why IBM is suing in New York!)

TiPb, of course, doesn't really care about no frivolous lawsuit. We just want to see what kind of "screaming" fast new iPhones we can has next year!

The iPhone already supports standards-based POP and IMAP email accounts, and as of 2.0 supports the big-in-business Exchange format accessed via ActiveSync. But much as Microsoft would like to completely own everythat space, there are several competing corporate communication soluting out there, including RIM/Blackberry's North American powerhouse, Novell's Groupwise (which I'm still not convinced Chad didn't just make up...), and of course, good old Lotus Notes.

Well, if you're in the latter camp, then IBM has some great news for you:

Bring IBM® Lotus® Domino® email, calendar, and contacts to your Apple iPhone. Planned for delivery in 2008 as IBM Lotus iNotes™ software, Lotus Notes data will combine with the flexibility and connectivity of the Apple iPhone. To be built on the time tested IBM Lotus Domino Web Access infrastructure, users will be able to quickly access email, calendars, and contacts through the rich Apple iPhone user experience.

(For some interesting background on this, check out Apple Insider)

Hey, maybe this news, along with some more accurate analysis, will get Gartner to approve the iPhone for slightly less limited enterprise use! Granted, it's not the "first class experience" Windows Mobile offers, but it does provide significant -- and differentiating -- value in its own right (wide screen, multi-touch, media, easy to use, easy to develop for, etc.) which may just suit people in some types of businesses just a wee bit better.

But I digress. Anyone out there using Lotus Notes right now? Eager to try it on your iPhone? If so, how does the functionality look to you? Anything killer? Anything a deal breaker? Let us know!