Apple has surpassed Amazon as the world’s most valuable brand, according to Kantar’s annual BrandZ report, which blends financial performance with consumer research to score the globe’s top 100 brands.

The report, which is typically dominated by tech companies, showed that automotive and luxury are gaining popularity while Chinese brands are doing well largely due to domestic support.

Amazon fell to third place, while Google moved up to second as top-ranked Apple’s brand value exceeded $947 billion. Microsoft and Tencent held onto their fourth and fifth place spots, respectively, as Facebook fell from sixth to eighth.  

Kantar’s brand value does not equate to company revenues; instead, the firm isolates financial data that can be tied to a company’s branded business and adds in quantitative data taken from 170,000 consumers in 50 countries meant to assess consumer attitudes towards brands. (The new report is based on 2021 data.)

Apple rose to No. 1 largely due to its growing lineup of products and services and is on pace to become the first trillion dollar brand, according to Kantar Knowledge Leader J Walker Smith. Trust is part of this, he said, “but the bigger driver is Apple is leveraging its platforms now to move into other categories.” That includes payment services, which allows Apple to reach consumers in new ways. 

Apple is jumping into the buy now pay later field, taking on the likes of Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm, it announced earlier this month. The company has also worked to assuage consumer concerns about privacy, although its recent move not to expand anti-tracking features on iPhones surprised marketing industry professionals.

Amazon was overtaken by Google and Apple due in part to the fact that online shopping, which surged early in the pandemic, has decelerated, the report suggests.

Google saw the third-fastest growth behind luxury brand Cartier and YouTube, owned by Google parent Alphabet. Google’s growth is driven by its range of work apps and productivity services that have been integrated into consumers’ lives, according to Kantar. Facebook saw its brand value fall by 18% from the last report—a slide Kantar attributed to tightening smartphone standards from Apple and Google Android.

The report shows the total value of the top 100 most valuable brands at $8.7 trillion, a 23% increase from last year’s report. 

The increase came amid a tumultuous business climate including continuing complications from the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation. Smith suggested the best way to weather the disruptive marketplace is by investing in brand building.

Successful strategies include growing product lines to move into new categories while appealing to consumer demands for more sustainable brands.

Tesla, which has won fans with its environmentally-friendly electric vehicles, jumped to 29th place, up from 47th last year. Kantar attributed the rise to Tesla becoming more of a mainstream brand.

Chinese brands are becoming increasingly valuable–a shift Kantar largely attributes to the country’s domestic market. “There’s a little bit of a home-field advantage for a lot of Chinese brands,” said Smith. Only a few Chinese brands are getting notable revenue from U.S. consumers. TikTok is the only Chinese brand that gets over 1% of its value from the U.S. as it works to strengthen its presence in the region. 

Despite moves to regulate Chinese tech companies in the U.S., China's global cloud computing software is also gaining value with U.S. consumers–30 to 40% of companies in the U.S. would consider using Alibaba Cloud or Tencent Cloud, due to service quality and price affordability, according to Kantar BrandZ’s latest B2B equity surveys. Chinese telephone services such as Huawei and home appliance company Haier are expanding abroad and could gain traction in the U.S. although there are constraints with international trading regulations, according to Kantar.

Chinese consumers are also partly behind the rise in the value of luxury brands, a category that grew by 45%, according to Kantar. Louis Vuitton is the first luxury brand to crack the top 10, which Kantar attributed to the industry’s growth both worldwide and in China.