As it always happens in the last decade of May for ten years in a row, WPP and Millward Brown have published their famous ranking of the Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, the 2015 BrandZ.

Although it differs significantly from the latest Forbes list of the most valuable brands in terms of figures, both rankings show an important trend: technology is the biggest and fastest-growing category in 2015. It grew by 24% from 2014; only retail demonstrated the same pace. The top three leaders are the tech icons: Apple ($246.9 billion, + 67%), Google ($173.6 billion, +9%) and Microsoft ($115.5 billion, + 28%).

Overall, all 100 brands on the list demonstrated 14% growth from 2014, 2%+ from the previous period, which is about $3.3 trillion in nominal financial value.

Facebook was the fastest riser having added +99% from 2014. Tremendous growth was also shown by Apple (+67%), Intel (+58%), the U.S.-based natural fast food chain Chipotle (+44%), Audi (+43), Verizon (+36%) and the three Chinese companies: an insurance giant China Life (+44%), a financial company China Construction Bank (38%), and a web services company Baidu (+35%).

Amid the general stagnation or fall in brand value of European power brands (+31% over the ten years, -9.3% in 2014), Chinese brands rise and demonstrate a phenomenal growth by 1,004% from 2006, when the BrandZ ranking was launched first. The Chinese leading e-commerce retailer Alibaba  ($64 billion) which entered the BrandZ ranking for the first time this year, has overtaken both Amazon and Walmart. In total, the U.S. brands have grown in value steadily by 137% over the ten years (+15% in 2014), mainly due to the tech companies in the top 10.

While tech and retail both rose by 24%, the worst performers across all categories were global banks and luxury that lost 2% and 6% respectively. Cars (+3%), personal care (+2%), regional banks (+1%) and apparel (+0.1%) showed almost no dynamics.

The full ranking with more analysis and infographics are available here.