Arguably, Apple tops the list as one of the leading global companies, with its products desired by millions around the world, and a new study not only affirmed that stature but also crowned the American firm as the most valuable brand over the past 12 months.

According to research agency firm Millward Brown Optimor, Apple's brand value surged by 19 per cent to $US183 billion since 2011 to get past its competitors in the elite BrandZ rundown of the most valuable brand names in the world.

Apple, according to Millward Brown Managing Director Nick Cooper, dominated the Top Ten list this year, which he noted was mostly populated by tech-oriented companies.

Mr Cooper attributed the trend to the success accumulated by international tech firms in the past few decades, which started in the late 1970s and exploded further in the 1980s, in which Microsoft, IBM and Apple became household names.

These brands, the study said, sustained their name recalls by convincing consumers the world over that their products were everyday necessities - with Microsoft and IBM managing to put together personal computers that the public can afford and can put into good use at the same time.

Apple followed through in mid-2000s by introducing a slew of innovative products - not exactly originals - that improved from their predecessors like the company's iPod digital music player, which eventually gobbled up a market that in the 1980s was dominated by Sony's Walkman portable music player.

The Cupertino-based firm eventually released the million-selling iPhone and iPad - the former it touted as the reinvention of mobile phone and the latter, again embodying an improvement from the prototype tablet that Microsoft had previously introduced.

Today, Apple is the world's biggest company in terms of market capitalisation as it breached in the first quarter of the current year the $600 billion mark, becoming one of the few global brands to do so.

Apple's dizzying success story, Mr Cooper said, only proved that consumer products that intrude into global households and welcomed by them will deliver the goods for the companies that manufacture them.

"The brands that are generally demonstrating the best growth are those that tend to be occupying spaces where there is a lot more intuitive natural use," Mr Cooper was reported by Reuters as saying in the report, which came out Tuesday.

He noted too that seven tech firms made it to the Top Ten circle, among them IBM, Microsoft, Google and Facebook, which pointed to the emerging trend that tech brands were gradually shaping up global consumers' everyday businesses.

"It's all pervading ... and there's a lot of excitement and new news. This is where it's all happening. That tends to increase not only the demand and financial performance but also the role of brand," Mr Cooper said.

The achievements, however, by some tech firms bring with them considerable downsides as Mr Cooper noted that "consumer technology is receiving the same kind of scrutiny once reserved for banks and brands will have to respond convincingly to increasing regulatory oversight."

Consequently, more attention, most of them unwanted, will be trained on companies like Facebook and Google - the former attracting the world's eye when it went public last Friday and the latter recently wining the approval of Chinese regulators on its quest to take over Motorola Mobility.

These firms, the study said, may be the dollar-magnets for now but may find themselves struggling in the next few years or so, just like what happened to former internet giants AOL and Yahoo.