Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft and Sony are most trusted tech brands 2019

12 March 2019

Only four tech companies have made the US top ten most trusted brands in 2019, with Samsung and Sony the big winners.

Amazon drops to second, Samsung and Sony rise

Amazon is the most trusted tech brand in the United States and second only to food market chain, Wegmans, in the Axios Harris Poll Reputation Rankings for 2019, although polling just a few weeks later may have delivered a different outcome.

Just a few weeks after the polling Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, was engulfed in a sexting scandal that lead to a divorce announcement. The scandal helped kill $3 billion in New York subsidies to build the company's HQ2 and may also have caused Amazon to lose the $100-billion JEDI contract to outsource all Defence Department cloud computing. That the scandal would have impacted on the poll outcome is without doubt.

Staying clear of scandal were the big tech movers in Samsung up 28 places to #7, and Sony up 21 places to #10.

Google and Apple steady slide

Apple, Amazon and Google achieved the top three reputation ranking in 2016, but for Apple and Google it has been downhill ever since. Google dropped a further 13 spots from 2018 from #28 to #41; and Apple slipped another three spots from #29 to #32nd.

Biggest loser was Facebook

The 2019 Harris Poll demonstrates that the backlash against Silicon Valley's business ethics is accelerating with Facebook being hammered by voters. Following the Cambridge Analytica saga, and Mark Zuckerburg's testimony to Congress, Facebook's reputation nose-dived by 43 places to #94.

Americans value stability and steadfastness

"For two years in a row, the public has ranked data privacy as America's most pressing social issue and consequently, it's no surprise that tech giants perceived as egregiously mishandling users' personal information had severe reputational losses," Harris Poll Chief Executive John Gerzema said in a written statement.

"Americans are emotionally drained and disillusioned by corporate misdeeds, and rebuked companies wracked by ethical or financial wrongdoings and rocky leadership, and rewarded those who stayed out of the fray," he said.

The polling was conducted in two sessions between November 2018 and January 2019. In the first, 6,118 US adults were asked to name two companies with the best and worst reputations. In the second stage, the 100 "most visible companies" were ranked by 18,228 adults via several measures of corporate reputation.