Google toppled Apple to be the most mentioned company in the media for 2013

Every year the Dow Jones releases a listing of the top 10 companies mentioned in the media, and gives an interesting look at the highlights of the past year.  Dow Jones’ DJX Factiva unit measures the number of times a company is mentioned in the media and charts them, giving you an interactive look at this very handy information.  Last year Apple was crowned the victor, having been mentioned 165,100 times, but this year they slipped all the way down to second place at 120,451 mentions.  Google managed to take the crown this year, winning first place with 123,769 mentions.

Also notable is the number of mentions Microsoft received, which at 84,174 puts them at a fairly distant third place, not unlike the mobile market sales numbers.  Other notable mentions for the mobile world would be Sony, who came in at 46,468, and Amazon who weighed in at 35,913.  As far as mobile carriers go, Verizon clocked in at 35,897 and AT&T had a were 26,386 mentions.  Sprint and T-Mobile didn’t appear to chart despite heavy efforts on T-Mobile’s part especially to garner some more media and customer attention.

What’s more interesting is why these companies charted the way they did.  Looking at the breakdown of months vs. times mentioned, we find that Google was mentioned most during the month of May, which just so happened to coincide with both Google I/O 2013 and the announcement of the Moto X.  Apple’s largest number of mentions was in September, when the iPhone 5S and 5C launched, as well as iOS7.  Given these monumental launches it’s really interesting to see that the media talked about Google more this year during their conference and product launches than Apple, which seems to be a large paradigm shift from previous years where Apple’s conferences and products dominated the news and other media platforms.

Microsoft’s largest number of mentions didn’t even come from the Xbox One announcements in May, but rather from continued coverage of E3 in June, as well as the release of a preview version of Windows 8.1.  Windows Phone just can’t seem to catch any breaks here, except for the announcement that Microsoft was buying Nokia’s hardware division in September, taking the second place highest month for mentions of Microsoft Corp.  Will these mentions reflect on the sales of Google devices next year, and more importantly the public’s perception of Android?  2014 will definitely paint an interesting and likely different picture than we’ve seen so far, but won’t stray from the dominance that Android has enjoyed since 2010.