The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands report indicates Apple has increased in value by 84 percent, rising to a staggering $153.3 billion, zooming past Google ($111,498 B) to take the top spot as the most valuable brand in the world. ‘BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands’ analyzes the world’s biggest brands and the economic and competitive dynamics that influence value fluctuations. As the most comprehensive annual ranking of brand value, the study doesn’t focus on corporate brands, but rather on consumer-facing brands. According to the people at Millward Brown Optimor, who developed the BrandZ rankings, Apple’s rise came as the value of the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands appreciated by 17 percent to $2.4 trillion, driven by year-on-year growth in all 13 product sectors studied. What drove this growth was mostly the iPad, they suggest. “Apple continued quietly developing a cloud and loudly discovered an empty space in the computing category that it filled with a new device – the iPad,” Ken Schept writes (download the PDF report here). Schept notes that, in the last quarter of 2010, Apple sold more iPads than Macs. “The iPad, which quickly met competition from other tablet makers like Samsung, helped Apple pass Dell and HP in total portable computer sales,” he writes. “An Apple cloud would further strengthen the brand as a trinity of platform, content and device,” he adds.