Apple Named 'Brand of the Year' for PCs, Mobile

Apple may not be under the leadership of Steve Jobs anymore, but the company is still the top technology brand, based on the 2013 Harris Poll EquiTrend study, released Friday.  

In its first full year with Tim Cook as CEO, Apple took home home brand of the year for the computer, tablet, and mobile phone segments in the annual study, which sampled more than 38,000 U.S. consumers on a wide range of products and services. The Cupertino tech giant earned strong scores for all elements of brand equity, including familiarity, quality, and purchase consideration to earn its spot at the top.

"Americans continue to give Apple brands strong ratings," Manny Flores, senior vice president at Harris Interactive, said in a statement. "What really stands out is that in all three of the categories Apple brands are measured — computer, tablet and mobile phone — its brand momentum scores are in the top 30 of all 1,500 brands evaluated in the study, showing that consumers see this as a brand of the future."

In the computer segment, HP took the runner-up position behind Apple, but was unable to match its peak brand equity scores reached in 2011, according to the study. Dell came in third with strong familiarly and improved purchase consideration scores, while Sony came in fourth. Meanwhile, a number of computer brands ranked below category average, including: Acer, Asus, Compaq, Fujitsu, Gateway, Lenovo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Toshiba.

In the tablet segment, consumers put Apple's iPad ahead of the Kindle Fire, Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy, and HP Slate devices, all of which ranked above category average. Meanwhile, the BlackBerry PlayBook, Microsoft Surface, Motorola Xoom, Nook HD tablets ranked below average.

In the mobile phone category, Apple beat out runner-up HTC, as well as Samsung and LG, though each ranked above average. Mobile phone brands ranking below average included: Blackberry, Kyocera, Motorola, Nokia, Pantech, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony, and T-Mobile.

When it comes to service providers, Verizon was the big winner, taking home brand of the year in two categories. The company was named the top pre-paid mobile carrier for a second consecutive year and mobile network brand of the year for a third time.

AT&T came in second in both categories, also earning above-average scores. Sprint and T-Mobile both ranked below average in the mobile network category, as did Alltel, CenturyLink, Cricket, Virgin, and Vonage.

As for printers, HP was named brand of the year, while Canon took runner up, followed by Kodak, Samsung, and Xerox. Brother, Dell, Epson, Konica Minolta, Kyocera Mita, Lexmark, Panasonic, Ricoh, Sharp, and Toshiba all ranked below-average.

Meanwhile, the Harris Poll raised some eyebrows back in 2011 when it released its list of the top tech brands — and Apple didn't lead any of the categories. In last year's study, however, Apple swept the computer, tablet, and mobile phone categories.