Apple inches up valuable brands index

Apple is now the eighth most valuable brand in the world after leapfrogging nine places in the Best Global Brands report for 2011.

The report is published by Bloomberg, which noted that Apple's brand value jumped 58 per cent last year, taking it to a total value of $33.49 billion (around £21.7 billion).

Other high rollers for 2011 include Amazon, which came from 36th to 26th in the rankings, Google, which came in fourth after a 27 per cent increase in value, and Microsoft which lost 3 per cent but still managed to come in third.

But non could usurp the mighty Coca Cola, which topped the chart again.

Soz, HP

The good news doesn't end there for Cook and co; the latest news from the analyst pool suggests that Apple could overtake HP as the world's top PC vendor this year.

There's a spot of number fudging going on here though; the fruity company can only overtake HP if you include iPad sales – tablet sales aren't usually included in PC sales figures.

But if we allow the merging of categories, it would see Apple's computing market share hit 17.6 per cent, 4.6 per cent more than HP's 13 per cent.