Mobile phone brands top online buzz
Edelman, the world’s leading independent public relations firm, and Brandtology, one of the larger independent business and brand service providers, Tuesday unveiled their second edition of the quarterly Digital Brand Index for China, which tracked netizen behavior and technology brand activities in the last quarter of 2009.
Between October and December 2009, the index monitored 472 influential channels and tracked 210,598 online conversations pertaining to 93 large technology brands. The result shows that one major technology brand was mentioned every 38 seconds, compared to the first DBI 1.0 index for July 2009 to September 2009. In the previous index, the data showed one major brand was mentioned every 45 seconds.
China Telecom climbed to third place and China Unicom ranked seventh on the new index’s Top 10 buzz list due to their promotion of 3G services. China Unicom’s sole distribution rights to the iPhone in China is believed to have boosted the telecom provider’s ranking.
Microsoft also gained significant online traction with its brand mentions up 22 percent and conversations about the US-based company up 41 percent, possibly because of the release of its new Windows 7 software system and other new products.
The Economic Forum on Tianya.com gained a 192 percent increase in brand mentions, becoming one of the “buzziest” channels, according to the index.
Telecom and mobile brands are still the hottest brands in online conversations, followed by Hewlett-Packard and Sony. Oracle is the only B2B brand among the top 10 brands.
“While our DBI 1.0 data successfully gave an overview to the online landscape in China, the DBI 2.0 demonstrated a progressive change of consumer and netizen behavior over time due to various activities by technology brands,” said Vincent Lee, manager of digital strategy for Edelman China.
The DBI research was conducted on a quarterly basis in the Asia-Pacific region’s eight major markets: Australia, the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore.
Tags: China-Telecom, China-Unicom, mobile, telecom