On April 28th, Edelman APAC, in partnership with social media intelligence firm, Brandtology, unveiled the latest edition (DBI 10.2) of their quarterly Digital Brand Index cross eight Asia-Pacific markets (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan). With data from January to March 2010, the DBI tracked netizen behaviors and technology brand activities during the lunar holiday season.

Results across the region showed that Twitter has established itself as the dominant channel for sharing news about technology brands across Asia, except in Hong Kong as well as in China where it is banned. Google and Microsoft also continued to rank in the top 10 across countries, alongside discussions on local telecommunications brands in each market.

Break down to the China market and here are the key findings:

• 184,374 online conversations relating to 88 large technology brands tracked within 472 influential channels. This represents one major technology brand mentioned online in China every 42 seconds, compared to one brand mention every 38 seconds found in DBI 10.1 (2009Q4 data).

• Google, which led all other brands in terms of brand mentions in the first quarter, saw its buzz factor increase significantly amid online debate over its withdrawal from China. The total number of brand mentions online of Google grew by 30 per cent since DBI 10.1 and 55 per cent in terms of Channel Index.

• Acer followed Google as the second most buzzed brand, with a total of 10,431 online brand mentions, a jump in position from #9 in DBI 10.1. Acer also leads all other brands in terms of its engagement index, which evaluates how leading online content creators (influencers) are being actively wooed by brands.

• The two major telecom carriers in the country, China Telecom and China Unicom, continued to rank in the top 10 list of “buzziest” brands in China in third and eighth place respectively, due to the active promotion of their 3G services and mobile phones. Mobile manufacturers Nokia, Sony and Samsung also made the top 10 list.

• Kingsoft made DBI’s top 10 buzz list for the first time with 5,573 major online buzz, most likely due to its online marketing /engagement initiatives surrounding new anti-virus services, WPS software and an online video game drive. The company also ranked #4 in terms of Average Engagement.

• Overall, telecom and mobile phone companies and software companies are the most discussed brands online, followed by several technology brands such as Sony and Samsung. Software companies such as Oracle and Kingsoft improving their ranks both in terms of buzz volume and engagement.

1. Google | 34,211 mentions
2. Acer | 10,431 mentions
3. China Telecom | 10,137 mentions
4. Nokia | 10,048 mentions
5. Microsoft | 9,100 mentions
6. Sony | 7,081 mentions
7. Samsung | 6,636 mentions
8. China Unicom | 6,009 mentions
9. Kingsoft | 5,573 mentions
10. Oracle | 5,527 mentions

For more details and market-by-market fact sheet downloads, link here.

One critical query from my perspective is about Brandtology’s data collection methodology. The DBI results indicate that most of top 10 ”buzziest channels in China” are on Tianya, China’s leading mass BBS community. But based on my experience, there are much more buzz around technology brands on IT vertical sites, for example PConline for consumer IT, Chinabyte for corporate IT, and iMobile for mobile phone. Not sure whether Brandtology covers these sites (a full list here and here) and is able to grab all the data. If not, the DBI may be a bit misleading on media /channel selection for brands’ social media strategy.