Tencent's overall revenue for 2015's first quarter sees a slowdown. (Photo : Reuters)
Tencent's brand value is now $66 billion, a staggering increase of 95 percent from last year, making it the most valuable brand in China. This data comes from a report released by the agency Millward Brown.
A study on Tuesday showed that long-time leader China Mobile has been overtaken by Tencent Holdings Ltd., pushing the latter to become the most valuable brand in all of China, even surpassing state-owned enterprises which normally occupy the top five most valuable brands.
China Mobile, which was number one since the ranking was started in 2011, descended to the third place, with brand value of $56 billion, decreasing 9 percent from last year.
Aside from Tencent, private enterprises Alibaba and Baidu Inc. were now among top five most valuable brands in 2014.
On the subject of the top 50 brands, the value of private enterprises increased up to 278 percent, while the value of state-owned enterprises decreased by 6 percent. To date, the total value of the top 100 Chinese brands is split 47 by 53 percent, in favor of state-owned enterprises.
The study was based on an analysis spanning 23 different sectors among 1,200 Chinese firms. The data collected was further supplemented with 23,000-plus interviews of Chinese consumers.
Doreen Wang, an expert from Millward Brown, said that "indexes that reflect consumers' opinions have the same weight with indexes that reflect financial data in our value analysis."
Some state-owned enterprises suffered terrible losses because of China's economic downturns and consumer trust. More and more consumers are now shifting to private brands as they promise to deliver more. Scandals and corruptions within state-owned enterprises contribute to the tarnishing of state brands.
The Millward study also showed the drop in value of Agricultural Bank of China by 20 percent from last year, although no explanation was cited.
