The Value of This Tech Brand Is Diving

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 30, 7:46PM EST · Published Jun 12, 6:25AM EDT

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Most major tech brands have risen in value recently, along with the earnings of their parent companies and a growth in customers. Among the best examples are Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. However, one of the most famous tech brands in the world is losing ground fast.

In a new brand study, the value of Amazon rose 52% to $316 billion, making it the most valuable brand in the world. The survey, conducted for the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, put Apple next, up 3% to $310 billion. It was followed by Google. Its brand value rose 2% to $309 billion. Microsoft’s brand value was 25% higher to $251 billion. One of the few brands in the entire study that lost ground was IBM. Its brand value fell 11% to $86 billion.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM | IBM Price Prediction) has been troubled for some time. Its revenues have fallen in most quarters for the past six years. In fact, its quarterly top line was down 22 quarters in a row through the end of 2017. IBM has tried to evolve from a public corporation driven mostly by hardware and traditional software sales to one driven by artificial intelligence and cloud computing. It has even created a new brand for many of these initiatives: Watson. This has partially left the IBM brand behind. Thomas Watson and his son Thomas Watson Jr. ran IBM for almost the entire period from 1914 until 1971. The current CEO, Virginia Marie “Ginni” Rometty, has been a disappointment to investors for years.

One of the aspects of the Most Valuable Brand survey is what the brand does to help the value of the company. In the past five years, IBM’s stock is off 25% while the value of the Nasdaq is up by 79%.

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IBM has largely lost the race in the artificial intelligence and cloud business to leaders like Amazon and Microsoft. Given the lead these companies have, IBM almost certainly can’t close that gap. The sales of its big, expensive hardware, which were once the heart of the company, have fallen. This firm gambled unsuccessfully on a turnaround strategy, and its brand value has suffered accordingly. Several huge tech companies are among those with the best reputations in America. IBM is not among them.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.