May 23, 2012: Apple has earned the top position of being the world’s most valuable brand for the two consecutive years now, as per the study released on Tuesday. According to the annual BrandZ study by Millward Brown, Apple has grabbed the top position by improving its brand value to $182.9 billion, which is 19% more than the previous year.

The Cupertino, California based company was ahead of IBM by about $30 billion dollars. Overall, the technology companies have scored well in the BrandZ study. Following IBM, Google landed at the third place. The other tech company falling in top five brands’ bracket is Microsoft, which is at fifth position. Surprisingly, McDonald is the only non-technology brand in the top five brands right above Microsoft.

The study judges the brands and ranks them on basis of their value, financial data analysis, market intelligence and consumer measures of brand equity. A press release for the study acknowledges that the Apple continues to dominate the market, albeit it is not able to escape the challenges.

“Apple continues to innovate and maintain its ‘luxury’ brand status, but faces future competition from Samsung,” a press release for the study states. The press release further goes on to state that – “Samsung is successfully outpacing Apple in a significant number of markets by positioning as a cool, well-priced alternative to the ubiquitous iPhone.”

The other brands in the top 10 list were Coca-Cola, Marlboro and AT&T followed by Verizon and China Mobile.

One brand that has performed extremely well in the study was Facebook. This social network soared 74% up in brand value and became the fastest brand-value riser in the study. Facebook went on to take a steep leap to land at 19^th spot from 35^th spot.