According to experts, it is a matter of days when Amazon will leave Google and Apple far behind and become the most valuable brand in the world. According to the latest BrandZ rankings, it has already happened – with Amazon ending the 12-year long dominance of Apple and Google at the ranking list of the top 100 global brands.

Amazon is worth 315.5 billion dollars today and is the first brand to assume the No. 1 position after 12 years.

According to the latest BrandZ global rankings, Amazon’s value rose by 52% between 2018 and 2019, while Apple grew by 3%, to 309.1 billion dollars and Google by 2%, to slightly under 309 billion dollars. Microsoft, comfortably ranked as fourth, with the value of 251 billion dollars, recorded the second best value growth in the top 10, of 25%, followed by Visa at the fifth place, of 22%,  to 178 billion dollars, and Alibaba as seventh, of 16%, to 131 billion dollars.

Amazon’s global value this year is by 409% higher than Microsoft’s in 2006, with the latter being the first brand to retain the leading position when the ranking was introduced.

– Amazon’s rise in brand value has been steady over the past few years as it has evolved from an online retailer to an “ecosystem brand” – says Graham Staplehurst, BrandZ’s global strategy director, adding the following:

– It has successfully connected the values and positive brand associations from one business – ease of use, speed, reliability – to other areas. Enabled by developing technologies, and not being afraid to try and fail at times, Amazon has diversified into a range of offers from cloud computing to smart devices. As the boundaries between traditional businesses blur, Amazon has been ideally positioned to seize emerging opportunities.

The only brands in top 10 reducing their value are Facebook (sixth), with a drop of 2%, and Tencent (eighth), of 27% – although Tencent’s fall can largely be justified by a new limit of revenue from games in China. To sum up, the first 100 got nearly one-third of a trillion dollars (328 billion) last year to reach 4.7 tn – which roughly equals the combined GDP of Spain, Korea and Russia.

Many brands surprised with their stable status on the list or a sudden jump, but it is all variable and time will tell things will progress further.

Kantar’s BrandZ valuation process takes the financial value created by a brand in US dollars and multiplies it by the proportion of that value generated by the brand contribution alone. That brand contribution is derived from consumer research that quantifies how much of the volume people purchase. This year’s analysis involves 122,000 brands, 3.6 million consumers, 418 categories, 51 markets and 5.1 billion data points.