Interbrand has published their ‘Best Global Brands 2013’ report, an annual edition showing all the most valuable brands in the world. For thirteen years, Coca-Cola has maintained the lead, but Apple has finally claimed the number one spot.

Apple has been ranking up on the Interbrand charts, in 2011 the company sat at eighth place and last year cropped to second. Even with investors, analysts and some critics claiming Apple will soon fall at the hands of Android and Samsung, everything is looking positive this year for Cupertino.

Even with the lack of real innovation coming from Apple this year, they have managed to gain record sales on their iPhone line, with expected revenue to be around $38 billion for the iPhones this quarter, after nine million sales in three days.

On top of the huge revenue, Apple brand loyalty, advertisement and product satisfaction are all reasons they have taken the number one spot. Millions of people choose iPhone again and again and update their software as soon as Apple pushes out the update, showing consumers are actively using their smartphone and want the latest.

Coca-Cola has actually dropped to third place this year, with Interbrand deciding to give Google the second place. Even though Google makes most of its revenue through advertisement marketing, they have huge customer loyalty, with many choosing Google’s services over competitors, having Search, Maps, Mail and Internet Video on lock-down.

The company has also started moving into hardware with the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 and continues to dominate the mobile world with Android. This is on top of developing competitors against Microsoft’s Office and Windows, with Drive and Chrome OS.

Behind the top three are IBM and Microsoft, followed by General Motors, McDonalds, Samsung, Intel and Toyota. Nokia and BlackBerry have fallen this year, with the acquisition from Microsoft hurting the brand quite badly and BlackBerry’s retirement from the consumer market killing off their brand to all ex-BlackBerry users.

Surprisingly well loved brands like Starbucks still sit at the back of the 100 lineup, while age-old technology companies Dell and HP hit the top 20. Coca-Cola has millions of likes on Facebook, more than Apple and Google put together, making us question how much brand awareness technology companies actually have, apart from Apple.