The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, an annual ranking of brand value developed by Millward Brown Optimor with The Financial Times, has recognized MTS as Russia’s top brand and valued it at $10.9 billion.
Not only is MTS – short for Mobile Telesystems – Russia’s leading mobile operator based on number of subscribers (71.4 million in late 2010), the group also runs a wide range of activities, from mobile and fixed voice to broadband, pay TV, and content and entertainment services, in all Russian regions as well as in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, and Belarus.
MTS has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since July 2000 and on Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) since November 2003.
The value of the MTS brand in this global ranking has grown for the fourth year in a row. When MTS entered the ranking in 2008 as the first Russian company, its brand was valued at $8.1 billion. The value of the brand increased to $9.2 billion in 2009, and it rose to $9.7 billion in 2010.
Millward Brown Optimor considers that MTS has “one of the highest brand momentum scores.” The group is “leveraging its equity through expansion into mobile payments and its own branded devices, as well as through international expansion into India.”
MTS and Shyam Telelink, a telecommunications operator in India, announced in late 2008 that Shyam Telelink would work under the MTS brand. Both companies are owned by Sistema, a large diversified financial corporation operating in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
MTS was named the “mobile brand of the year” in Belarus in 2007. In December 2010, it was ranked as the most valuable Russian brand by InterBrand, with a brand value of $7.75 billion.
Created 13 years ago, the BrandZ ranking is based on both quantitative consumer research and financial analysis.
Technology and telecom brands comprise a third of the Top 100 brands compared with a quarter in 2006. Reflecting the influence of fast-growing markets, 12 Chinese brands, 3 Brazilian brands, 1 Indian brand, and 1 Russian brand appear in the Top 100.
Along with Apple – the world’s most valuable brand, with a value increase of 84% to $153.3 billion –, year-over-year standout performers for the 2011 BrandZ brand valuation report include Facebook ($19.1 billion), Amazon ($37.6 billion), and Baidu, the Chinese search engine ($22.6 billion).
Sberbank, Russia’s national savings bank, is the only other Russian brand to appear in the ranking.
