In a recent Ipsos Reid report, of the top 10 brands in Canada, 7 are US technology companies.  How has this changed from 10 years ago?  Back in 2005, only 4 of the top brands were tech companies.  Traditional consumer brands such as Coke, Disney and Toyota dominated the majority of the 2005 list.  Also, of interest is that only one of the four technology companies survived the last decade as one of the leading brands – Microsoft.  Now that technology is dominating our brand conscience, what does this actually say about business?  I think it is important to note that the 2005 list included technology firms that you might consider to be “pure play” tech companies.  IBM, for example generates all of its revenue selling IT hardware, software and services.  Same was true of the other four tech firms on the 2005 list.  Also of interest is that the majority (4 of 7) of the tech firms on the 2015 list are not pure play tech firms at all.  While they may sell IT services, they generate the majority of revenues from non-technology businesses.  Google, Facebook, Youtube and Amazon are all categorized as technology businesses but are they really the same as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung (the other 3) or IBM, Intel and others that were on the 2005 list?  What we are seeing is the emergence of new market disrupting brands that are labeled tech companies because they use IT to disrupt existing business models.  I expect that we will continue to see this in the next decade too.  Perhaps the 2025 list will include only “tech” firms but my bet is that none will be pure play technology companies….

Tags: Financial Services